Balance of Food

Summertime reading: Our coverage of high-fructose corn syrup

We really don't like high-fructose corn syrup.

There are many problems in the food supply that we would love to fix. Getting rid of high-fructose corn syrup would be at the top of the list.

No ingredient has made more of an impact on the food supply in the last 30 years.

We've written a lot of articles about high-fructose corn syrup and how to avoid it in your diet. School lunch stories, Daily Show and Colbert Report coverage, food marketing: just some of the areas covered in stories concerning high-fructose corn syrup.

Here are a few randomly picked highlights:

• Dr. Robert Lustig's slightly shifting views on high-fructose corn syrup

• Temptation of the Week: Yogurt for men

• 2012 losses: Dublin Dr. Pepper and authentic Canadian Twinkies

• Temptation of the Week: Honey Boo Boo sketti

• Baked Lays contains 'corn sugar,' but Frito-Lay shouldn't use that deceptive name

You can click here to see all of our extensive high-fructose corn syrup coverage.

Summertime reading: Check out our school lunch coverage

Kids seem to be going back to school earlier and earlier, so soon we'll have more to write about concerning school lunch coverage.

We have an election coming up this fall. You don't have to follow politics to know that school lunch advances will have to wait until the Dems take back the House. That isn't likely to happen due to severe redistricting Congressional districts after the 2010 elections.

As we've seen, things could get worse as the GOP-led House tries to destroy the small gains made by Congress before the 2010 elections.

Here are a few randomly picked highlights:

• Chicken nuggets added to 4-year-old's lunch proves liberals, conservatives can agree on school lunches

• Culinary high school programs could solve multiple food issues

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

• Blanche Lincoln, who worked hard to cut school lunch increase, lost her Senate race

• Are we not giving our kids enough credit by serving them flavored milk?

You can click here to see all of our extensive school lunch coverage.

What's Tempting: Portable protein

We are obsessed about getting protein these days. And with our eating on the go lifestyle, portable protein is positively pleasing.

So in theory, Oscar Mayer's P3 would be an ideal solution for people to get protein on the go.

P3 — Portable Protein Pack — promises at least 13 grams of protein from a combination of meat, cheese, and nuts. Think Kraft cheese, Oscar Mayer meat, and Planters nuts, all corporately owned under the same umbrella.

The meat is turkey, ham, or chicken; reduced fat cheddar cheese are in 3 of the 4 options; and all the nuts are dry roasted.

As grab-and-go solutions go, you could do a lot worse. With a little creativity, you could do a lot better for less money.

Nuts

Buying nuts in bulk is a lot cheaper and you can proportion the amount of nuts to suit your needs. You might like the meat and cheese option but the wrong nuts could be in the pre-packaged container. You pick the nuts; you could even do a combo of walnuts and almonds or almonds and peanuts.

Cheese

If you subscribe to eating full-fat cheese as part of your protein plan, you are better off selecting your own cheese. Raw milk cheese, blue cheese, asiago cheese … think the "Cheese Shop" Monty Python sketch.

If you don't eat meat but do eat cheese, you could double up on the cheese and nuts.

Meat

Jerky would be the ideal choice for portable protein since you don't have to worry about refrigeration. The drawback to the meat in the P3 is that you should eat that pretty quickly if you are out.

The disadvantage to jerky and processed meat (and the cheese) is the sodium level, so hopefully you are bringing plenty of water.

Processed meat is usually lacking in flavor — hence the bread and condiments — so snacking on plain processed meat doesn't sound appetizing.

Alternatives

Peanut butter, eggs, tuna, lentils, beans, even oatmeal: great protein ideas, but kind of messy when shooting for portable protein. Seeds are good to enter into the mix: eating ½ cup of roasted pumpkin seeds gets you 14g of protein.

Kraft, for its part, began selling a product called P3, which combines nuts, meat and cheese, earlier this year.

photo credit: Kraft/Oscar Mayer

Farmland is propaganda, but Katie Couric doesn't help Fed Up credibility

The two most-buzzed about food documentaries this year are Farmland and Fed Up. One is propaganda and one isn't.

At least, that is one interpretation.

I first heard about Farmland via friends on Facebook. Fair enough. It seemed odd that I hadn't heard much about it otherwise.

With a modicum of digging, I figured out why Farmland hadn't crossed through: the movie was released by Big Food as propaganda. The reception I saw about Farmland on Facebook was generally positive. Not overwhelmingly positive, but positive.

Further reading proves why I'm glad I didn't waste my money and time. A lot of these documentaries flow together; I certainly didn't want to ruin my mind on a film that was trying to trick me.

Fed Up is not propaganda, though if you question the film's intent, you could easily conclude that the film is propaganda.

Companies that get rich off of high-fructose corn syrup and corn would think Fed Up is propaganda. Then again, some of those companies were involved in the propaganda that is Farmland.

If you look at the marketing of Fed Up, the corn people should be somewhat happy. After all, the marketing lumps corn sweeteners as "sugar." The film's Web site compares the addictive properties of sugar as "tobacco and alcohol." "The more sugar you eat, the more you need to satisfy your craving." Except that not all "sugar" is sugar.

We have a huge problem in this country with high-fructose corn syrup and artificial sweeteners. But the marketing of the film lumps everything together as "sugar." That doesn't help address the issue.

Marketing a film as "the film the food industry doesn't want you to see" sounds noble, but the motto inspires laughter more than anything else. The food industry won't care if you see Fed Up or Forks and Knives or King Corn.

Forks over Knives has good message, but presentation needs work

Forks and Knives and King Corn are other similar films are more straightforward, but their message is more general: eat better grown food.

Fed Up takes a simplistic position on a complex topic and takes a side, an obvious side. On some level, that is propaganda.

The difference might be whether you like the message in the film. The Farmland message is that farmers work hard so you shouldn't question how your food is grown or how animals are treated. We know that is propaganda because the people behind the film are being deceptive about the truth to further themselves.

Katie Couric is one of the major players involved in Fed Up — an executive producer and narrator. Couric's popularity has overshadowed her journalism sins.

Some might remember the plagiarism incident where Couric was reading first-person essays that didn't come from her experience. The sham was unveiled when a CBS News Web producer was fired for plagiarizing a Wall Street Journal column. Couric was never punished for her role.

Couric's worst journalism sin was "being deceptive about the truth to further themselves." In July 2008, Couric interviewed then GOP presidential candidate John McCain on the CBS Evening News. The answer McCain gave to a question was edited out of the interview and an answer to a different question was inserted into the interview.

The substitution was a direct violation of CBS News rules. The blame was shifted to an unnamed producer who edited the piece. Yet no one involved, especially Couric, were ever punished much less fired.

What Couric did was propaganda and passed it off as news. This isn't to say that Fed Up is propaganda, but you'll have to forgive me if I don't trust the journalism skills of Couric.

BalanceofFood.com film coverage

I didn't go see Farmland because I know from good sources that it is propaganda. I didn't go see Fed Up because of a major player in the film who has done propaganda. While I am not directly comparing the two situations, others will make different choices.

Propaganda is not always black and white. Elements of Farmland are true or relevant. Elements of Fed Up are true and relevant. While Fed Up has distinct advantages over Farmland in being true and relevant, to preach outside the converted, the voices have to be credible. There are a lot of voices in Fed Up that are absolutely credible: Katie Couric is not one of them.

What's Tempting: Guilt-free 0 g sugar

"There are lots of things to feel guilty about. Think Thin isn't one of them. 20 grams of protein. Zero sugar. Zero guilt."

This is one of my favorite food ads these days. Can't say as much for the product.

Protein is in and sugar is out. So the Think Thin protein bars are designed to appeal to both concerns.

The bars achieve 0g of sugar through sugar alcohols. Think Atkins from 8-10 years ago.

Turning a stereotype around usually leads to a well-done ad. Instead of women being the ones treated as an object of desire, the roles are reversed and the women are ogling the young man.

In Spinal Tap, the band members talk about the fine line between stupid and clever. This ad was clever.

Using guilt in marketing to women is as old as marketing. The ad tells you to feel guilty about some things (like ogling a friend of your son), but not the protein bars they are selling.

We aren't fans of guilt in general, especially when it comes to food marketing. 20 g of protein is an easy choice, depending on the source of protein. 0 g of sugar is touted as an easy, good, and most importantly, guilt-free choice. What could rid you of guilt quicker than 0 g of sugar?

If you handled the Atkins bars with little trouble, then you'll likely be fine with these bars. However, many people can't handle sugar alcohols, then and now.

The idea that "0 g sugar" removes all guilt assumes we turn off our brains when it comes to what we put in our bodies. Anything that says 0g sugar as a marketing tool always has proverbial fine print involved.

When the low-fat craze hit, "0 g fat" became a siren of a "good" food, regardless of the fact that sugar (likely high-fructose corn syrup) was a frequent substitute and we need fat in our diet.

The siren of "0 g sugar" doesn't mean it's a good food. The siren should really be to read the fine print.

If something is too good to be true, then it isn't true. Besides, we need fruit sugar (ideally from fruit) and milk sugar (for those who consume milk products). And a bit of sugar from good sources adds fun and flavor to our food-eating lives.

Whether you use honey, maple syrup, Stevia, agave, or another sweetener, use it in moderation and you'll likely be just fine. Too much sugar, especially in the form of high-fructose corn syrup, is doing great harm to our diets. But we don't need to go to 0g sugar in our diet.

Cutting out sugar 100% isn't practical. Cutting out guilt 100% isn't practical. You could feel guilty about some things, but having a bit of well-sourced sugar isn't one of them.

photo credit: Think Thin

Calvin Trillin on poutine from way back in 2009 from the New Yorker archives

This column ran on our sister blog, CanadianCrossing.com. Please enjoy it here. Click here for my take on poutine in Montreal.

The New Yorker is making its archives available for a limited time. Calvin Trillin is one of the best writers, food or otherwise. Trillin has a connection to Canada in that he lives in Nova Scotia in the summer.

Getting to write about food and living in Canada in the summertime: Officially jealous.

Trilin writes about food in a way that conveys place more than the food itself. Trillin wrote about poutine in this 2009 column from the New Yorker called "Funny Food."

"As a punch line, poutine has a lot going for it. Many Canadians believe that it is also good to eat."

In the column, Trillin writes about Wilensky's in Montréal, Smoke's Poutinerie, poutine in Nova Scotia, defying Canadian stereotypes, Rick Mercer, going on a subsequent poutine trip in Montréal.

Especially for 2009, the article is well-researched and lends an insight from a U.S. writer about poutine long before it became cool in hipster circles.

Here is a link to the 2009 Calvin Trillin column in its entirety. Read it while you can.

Special thanks to the Food Republic Web site for letting us know about this gem from the New Yorker.

photo credit: me

What's Tempting: Beans in my chips

Snack chips are fun. Beans are not fun. I want to eat snack chips. I want to like to eat beans.

Now I can get beans and rice in my chips. Problem solved.

These aren't as prominent on your grocery store shelves as corn and potato based varieties, but the beans and rice chips offer up one advantage: Fiber.

I got a couple of free sample bags of Beanfield's at an event earlier this year. (Free samples were available to everyone.) I liked the idea of extra fiber but wondered how they would taste. The free samples on site were pretty good, so I figured they were worth the experimentation time and energy.

The package promised 4g of fiber (3g soluble fiber) and 4g of protein just for 1 oz. chips. If you eat 3 oz., very easy to do, you get 12g of fiber (9g soluble fiber) and 12g of protein.

Just for eating chips.

The best part is that the chips do not taste like beans. Protein and fiber, yes; taste and texture issues, no. Sure they are more expensive than corn chips and potato chips, but the beans and rice chips make me full much longer … much, much longer.

Beans and rice are starchy, just like corn and potatoes, but they offer much more nutrition, even in chip form.

I have had these chips and homemade guacamole as a meal for lunch at work, all for much less than the national brand foot-long sandwich.

The chips aren't as exciting to the taste buds by themselves. They would lose in a landslide to Doritos should they be the only two choices in the world. With a dip such as guacamole, you wouldn't notice a significant difference.

We strive for foods with fiber so we can feel more full. Beans are great for protein and fiber, but taste and texture remain problematic. I have said numerous times that beans is the one food I wish I could eat more of, more than kale and pomegranate combined.

Whatever trade-off in fun is met with not being hungry after I eat the chips. Doritos and similar chips do not have that same magic.

Yes, eating beans are way better for you than eating them through chips. Sometimes, you make compromises. Black bean brownies. Beans in your chips.

If nothing else, eating chips made of beans and rice will give you a break from chips that end in -itos. You might go running back to your traditional chips, but you won't be as hungry to do so right away.