Corn Refiners Association tells us "Hey, it's ok in moderation."

The Corn Refiners Association, "the national trade association representing the corn refining (wet milling) industry of the United States," has come out with a series of ads and a website aimed at reducing American's growing mistrust towards high fructose corn syrup:

The commercials maintain a couple things. First, that Americans don't really know the effects high fructose corn syrup (HFC) can have on a body, and second, that HFC is the same as sugar or other sweeteners when consumed in moderation. On their site they link to various articles and scientific studies through 2007 to help back their claims.

However, more recent data suggest that HFC does contribute to specific obesity types that put more strain on the body, according to the Los Angeles Times. But the real HFC problem facing Americans is that it's in everything. Perhaps not the ribs you're eating this Sunday, but the bar-be-cue sauce you're going to slather on them. Perhaps not in the ice cubes you're going to use to keep yourself cool, but certainly the soda you're going to pour over them. Not the sensible salad you're going to have on Monday to assuage the guilt from weekend binge eating, but certainly in the raspberry vinaigrette that's just so good.

I would urge everyone to perform a simple refrigerator survey and see how many items contain high fructose corn syrup. From the bagel you ate this morning to the bread you eat at lunch to the pizza rolls you'll scarf at dinner, high fructose corn syrup is in all kinds of different things.

Is the Corn Refiners Association misleading us? I doubt it. HFC, like most foods, is probably just fine in moderation. It's being able to make the choice to consume it moderation that has become so difficult.

Wednesday news bites for September 3, 2008

Photo credit: Bookgrl

Farm to school programs improving quality of school lunch program
Nutritiondata.com reports on a University of Minnesota effort to bring better foods to the nation's children by "introducing fresh local produce into school cafeterias..." It's a banner idea and one I think should be implemented everywhere. If Alice Waters can make it happen in Berkeley, then why not where you live?

Slaughterhouse Series: Part One
Rebecca Thistlewaite, "a farmer, non-profit consultant, and mother of one entertaining three-year-old," begins to examine some of the problems inherent in the United States' current meat production and packing system. It's pretty grim and needs saving.

America's Most Endangered Foods
Forbes.com details Gary Paul Nabhan's efforts to save America's endangered food species. This is a great project and a wonderful movement. Food is history. It tells us where we come from. Food is also inherently practical. By using forgotten recipes we'll begin to learn forgotten techniques. Techniques previous generations had to use to get the most from their food. We're a nation of wastrels. By appealing to our sense of history, perhaps Mr. Nabhan can move us to greater efforts of care and conservation.

How to Cook and Use Every Part of Whole Chicken
Speaking of conservation....
From Lifehacker.com

Is Locavorism Practical Where You Live? Freaknomics States the Obvious
A "no duh" moment from the fine folks at Seriouseats.com (thanks for the stickers!). If eating local isn't practical where you live, don't expect yourself to be able to do it all the time. The secret? Do it when you can. Make solid choices. Be mindful. It really is that easy.

Wednesday news bites for August 20, 2008

Feed kids real food, not drugs
Culinate.com tackles doctors' latest recommendations that kids get drugs to help them lower cholesterol. Culinate's shocking recommendation? Stop feeding kids chemicals and candy and give them some real food.

Food for thought
The American Conservative magazine suggests food culture is no longer just the concern of hippy liberals and their dirty farmer's markets. Sustainability, local food and eating together are now the province of the conservative movement. How do they take our best ideas and claim them as their own?

Weather Watch
Agriculture savant Frederick Kirschenmann assesses the potential effects of climate change on farming in the United States and ways to ensure adequate food supplies in the future.
via Ruhlman

Poverty brings out the best in consumers...and cuisine!
Slashfood.com on the economic necessity for inventive food preparation.

Wednesday news bites for August 13, 2008

Photo credit: una cierta mirada

Obesity on the Kids' Menus at Top Chains
What does it do to a kids 1,200-calorie-a-day diet when lunch weighs in at 1,020? The Center for Science in the Public Interest released a study that finds 93 percent of the top chains' kid's meals are over 430 calories, the recommended 1/3 of daily caloric intake for kids aged four through eight.

Monsanto plots growth hormone exit
Based on increasing negative public opinion of Recombinant bovine somatotropin, Monsanto seeks to sell its inventory of Posilc, their branded hormone. Already illegal in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the EU, Slashfood wonders who will buy the stuff?

Dark Meat
Shmuel Herzfeld writes about an immigration sting that revealed poor working conditions, abusive practices, and teen agers working 17-hour days. Shocking and deplorable enough, but it could also mean the meat produced as kosher isn't kosher at all.

Niche Farming Offers Way Back to the Land
Niche farming provides extra income for many small and family-owned farms. Perhaps with the growing local food movement we'll see more people returning to the land.

Wednesday news bites for July 30, 2008

Photo credit: bored-now

Sense of Place: The Food of Florida
The Kitchn provides recipes and thoughts on the foods of my home state, Florida.

Making the most of your produce
The Seattle Times provides tips and tricks to preserving your summer produce.

Newspaper backlash
Good food is so yesterday
Culinate.com reports on the snarky tone food reporting has taken of late.

Mississippi is the fattest state for 3rd straight year
Colorado still leanest, D.C. loses weight
CalorieLab parses U.S. obesity. Seems poverty and sedintary lives are leading causes.

Does Fructose Make You Fatter?
The New York Times' Tara Parker-Pope brings us more bad news about fructose.

Wednesday news bites for July 23, 2008

Who Owns a River? Everyone Does
Rumination on the Kings River.

How to be a snob: drinking alcohol
GOOD: "I taste a hint of blackberry."
BAD: "The tang of Fruit Roll-Ups."

As Price of Grain Rises, Catfish Farms Dry Up
The New York Times looks at catfish farmers as an indicator of hardship for other food industries.

Food Econ 101
Paul Roberts discusses the economics of food production and why it's no longer working.

Sense of Place: The Flavors of Florida
A quick rundown of native Florida ingredients.

Granola

If you're like me, you get tired of the same breakfasts all the time. If you're like me you also avoid fast-food breakfasts like the plague (though they are way, way more delicious than the plague. Especially the Burger King Croissanwich). This weekend I decided to break out of my weekday doldrums of a bagel and a banana and use some of the oatmeal that's sitting on top of the fridge, promising heart health and low cholesterol.

Ingredients

• 2 cups rolled oats
• 1 cup chopped almonds
• 1/2 cup raw sunflower seeds
• wheat germ (optional, to be added later)
• 2 tablespoons peanut oil (or other low flavor oil. You can reduce this by half if you're worried about calories)
• 1/2 cup honey (or more, to taste)
• 6 oz. dried fruit
• A pinch of kosher salt

Supplies

• Cookie sheet
• Large mixing bowl (glass or ceramic is best--try to avoid plastic as you'll be working with hot ingredients)

Begin by spreading the nuts and oat meal out on a cookie sheet. Bake at 300°F for about 20 minutes, mixing twice during the baking process (I went with 8 minute intervals). Remove from the oven and combine in a large mixing bowl with the oil, honey, a dash of the salt and a generous sprinkling of the wheat germ.

Note: Wheat germ toasts very easily. You can control your granola's flavor profile by adding the wheat germ at different times. If you add it too early, however, it might burn. I would suggest baking the wheat germ no more than five minutes. However, if you want a rich, deep flavor with just a hint of smokiness and caramelization, then you might want to add the wheat germ during the second mixing, about 16 minutes during the first baking.

When the ingredients are well mixed, transfer them back to the cookie sheet and bake your mix an additional five minutes. Remove from the oven, go back to the mixing bowl and add your fruit. Taste. If it needs sweetening (it probably doesn't, especially if you brought dried fruit, to which manufacturers almost always add sugar), add a little more honey or a teaspoon of brown sugar. Let the mix cool, and you've got yourself some excellent granola with few additives, no HFC, and it works out to about fifty cents per serving.

Time Magazine tackles obesity

The June 23 issue of Time Magazine tackles obesity, America's number-one preventable disease. The issue examines School Cuisine, Overweight Children, and ways in which ethnicity, location and economic standing all contribute to the obesity problem:

It's no secret that the U.S. has a crippling weight problem and that our children are hardly exempt. Rising obesity threatens to condemn a significant share of the next generation to a lifetime of weight-related disease, overburdening the already struggling U.S. health-care system. Though a recent study by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) researchers found that childhood-obesity levels may finally have leveled off, more than 30% of American schoolchildren are still overweight, with little indication that rates will drop anytime soon. The CDC defines as overweight those children with a body mass index (BMI)--a rough factoring of height and weight--higher than the 85th percentile of figures from the 1960s and '70s, before the obesity epidemic hit. Obesity is defined as the 95th percentile. That's far from healthy. "The childhood obesity epidemic is a tsunami," says David Ludwig, an obesity researcher at Children's Hospital in Boston and the author of Ending the Food Fight. "We can see the wave heading toward shore."

Wednesday news bites for June 18, 2008

The $100 kitchen
Do you have an indispensable tool?

Tomato trials
Latest news from the continuing salmonella tomato saga.

Putting meat back in its place
Mark Bittman provides some practical advice on reducing the amount of meat you eat.

Japan, seeking trim waists, measures millions
Waist measuring in Japan becomes a mandatory part of the annual checkup for people between the ages of 40 and 74. The target? 33.5 inches for men and 35.4 inches for women.

Tastespotting is dead. Long live Food Gawker.

The 125 healthiest supermarket foods in America
No entry for best carrot.

Wednesday news bites for May 28, 2008

The Last Bite
The collapse of the world's food system.

Cooking with kids
The school lunch revolution. (Serious Eats via KCRW's Good Food)

The Great Sunflower Project
Watch and record behavior of bees in your garden. Help scientists understand the challenges bees are facing.

How to eat your vegetables: Five to seven servings a day?
Tips on how to get more vegetables into your diet.

Seasonal Ingredient Map
A neat little tool from Epicurious.com.

How to Cook Like a Chef?
A little insight into flavor profiles and mix-and-match ingredients. Also, a recipe for beet ravioli.

Chickpea and feta salad (Thanks, Gordo)

I've finally jumped on the Gordon Ramsay bandwagon. I'd heard about Hell's Kitchen, but hadn't dared let myself get sucked in. Until this season. Yes, the show is horrible. Yes, Ramsay is a caricature of himself. Yes, the contestants are, for the most part, hopeless saps who care more about fame and rubbing elbows with a star than about food or cooking. But one thing is clear, even through the haze of purple scripting, pointed editing and over production: Gordon Ramsay cares deeply for food, and the guy can cook. So why not seek him out in other venues?

I enjoy Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares and The F Word on BBC America. Ramsay does his bit of yelling on each, but nowhere near the amount either coaxed by producers or discovered by editors at the Fox Network. The F Word, especially, is a good show that's filled with simple, excellent recipes and a crew of people who clearly enjoy cooking (full disclaimer: I've only seen one full episode of The F Word, but in my defense, it was the two-hour season finale).

This recipe is inspired by none of those sources. It comes from Ramsay's video series produced by The Times Online and available for download via iTunes. In his latest installments, Ramsay is offering up delicious, low-fat recipes to help people eat and live better. His original recipe calls for chickpeas, red onion, chile, lemon juice and zest, paprika, and fresh parsley. I couldn't find the red chile he'd used, but I wanted the color and slight fruity flavor peppers impart to a dish. I also needed the heat, so I substituted an orange bell pepper and a green bell pepper (the red bells looked well past their prime) and some red pepper flakes.

Ingredients:

• 1 15-oz. can of chickpeas (garbanzo beans), drained
• Half a red onion, thinly sliced
• Half an orange bell pepper, thinly sliced
• Half a green bell pepper, thinly sliced
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 teaspoon salt (or more, to taste)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil + 1 tablespoon olive oil
• Fresh-ground black pepper (to taste)
• Red pepper flakes (added to taste)
• Fresh parsley (Though it pains me to say so, you can use dried parsley flakes for this dish. Go on. No one's watching.)
• A good chunk of Feta cheese, crumbled
• 1 lime

Other ingredients:
Pita bread

To begin, tear or cut the pita bread in half, and separate the pockets, top from bottom. Each piece of pita bread will yield four pieces of the eventual hard toast. Line the pita pieces on a baking dish, brush them with olive oil, and bake at 400 for about five minutes. You want them to be toasted and slightly crispy. Bring them out of the oven and set aside.

For the main dish:

• Cook the onions over medium-high heat for about a minute
• Add the peppers, sprinkle with salt, and reduce the heat to medium. Let the onions and peppers cook together for about four minutes
• Add the chickpeas and garlic and stir all the ingredients together
• Squeeze the lime over the pan, stir, and then add the pepper flakes and the parsley
• Then dump in about half the feta
• Stir to combine and until the feta just starts to melt
• Transfer the dish to a large bowl, add the remaining feta and some parsley and serve with the pita chips

This dish is so fast, it comes together in a manner of minutes. It's also incredibly healthy, intensely flavorful, and was a huge hit at my dinner table. Enjoy!

Michael Pollan lectures on food vs. nutrition

Another in the wonderful At Google lecture series.

Michael Pollan is one of the preeminent thinkers on food today and has earned accolades for his books, including The Omnivore's Dilemma and his latest, In Defense of Food.

Wednesday news bites for April 9, 2008

Grains Gone Wild - Paul Krugman (NYT) on the policies and practices that sent food prices through the roof.

U.S. food shoppers hit the highway to save a buck - Reuters on what some are doing about it. Sadly, buying local isn't among the implemented strategies.

Monsanto's Harvest of Fear - Monsanto makes even the smallest farmers pay a heavy price for disobedience.

New food safety label introduced to certify your meat is safe - We'll just have to assume the labelers aren't lying

Study: Food additives impact hyperactivity - Totally unsurprising. Can we have a study like this conducted in the United States? Please? Like, yesterday?

Roasted Cauliflower Soup

March brought some significant things to Gainesville. Namely, perfect weather: blue skies and warm sun. The days hovered just under 80 degrees with light breezes and skies dotted with white, puffy clouds. But recently something's happened. Our gorgeous spring weather was replaced by dim, gray skies and a constant, spitting rain. Nothing to do but stay indoors, curl up with a good book and eat comforting, roasted cauliflower soup.

Ingredients

• 1 head cauliflower
• 1 qt chicken stock (can be made with vegetable stock)
• 3/4 cups parmesan cheese (separated, 1/4 cup and 1/2 cup)
• extra virgin olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 medium shallot (you can substitute an onion, but the flavor will be stronger)
• Kosher salt
• Fresh ground pepper

Begin by heating the oven to 400 degrees F. While the oven heats, remove the cauliflower leaves and core and break the cauliflower into small florets. Spread the cauliflower florets in a single layer on a baking sheet or baking dish, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with Kosher salt and 1/4 cup of the Parmesan cheese. Place the cauliflower in the heated oven and roast for 15-20 minutes. The cauliflower's ready when you can easily pierce it with a fork.

While the cauliflower roasts, you'll want to get a large soup pot. Heat a tablespoon of oil in the bottom over medium heat. As the oil's heating, mince the garlic and cut the shallot to a fine dice. Add them to the pot and cook until translucent (about 5 minutes). When they become translucent, add the stock.

Once the cauliflower has finished roasting, increase the stovetop heat to high and bring the stock mixture to a boil. Add the cauliflower and remove the soup pot from the heat. Using an immersion blender, puree the cauliflower until the soup reaches a consistency you like.

Note: you can puree the soup in a regular blender. Just make sure to work in small batches and vent the lid from time to time, to avoid a cauliflower soup explosion.

After the cauliflower soup is smooth, add the remaining parmesan cheese and stir to combine, add salt and pepper to taste. Serve topped with some additional cheese and chives, oregano or chopped parsley. A couple pieces of good, crusty bread never hurt a soup, either.

I know huge swaths of the world are still dealing with wintry weather. Stop bemoaning the snow and sleet. Cuddle up. Hunker down. Do whatever it is you do when the weather outside is frightful. This time, though, add some homemade cauliflower soup. It's really quite good.

News bites: Kentucky Grilled Chicken? It'll never fly

• Will KFC grilled chicken be as successful as fried? (from Reuters) -- in a word? No.
• Skipping Cereal and Eggs, and Packing on Pounds (from NYT) -- Teens who skip breakfast gain weight (as if we didn't already know this)
• Bourdain's thoughts on the Food Network (from Food Network) -- looks to be a bit in the sauce, but still entertaining
• Smart Eating at Work - Part 3 (from NYT) -- top-10 snacks to have on hand at work. The thing I notice? A shit-ton of brand names. Product placement!

New York Times reports on 'Fat Pack'

Photo credit: Dogwelder

The New York Times today reports that people who eat a lot--especially those who eat out--get fat. Shocker.

The journalists, bloggers, chefs and others who make up the Fat Pack combine an epicure’s appreciation for skillful cooking with a glutton’s bottomless-pit approach. Cramming more than three meals into a day, once the last resort of a food critic on deadline, has become a way of life. If the meals center on meat, so much the better.

Even to those who have been in the game long enough to have seen more than a few cycles of food and diet fads, the Fat Pack culture is a shock.

“Most of us who are in this profession are here as an excuse to eat,” said Mimi Sheraton, the food writer and former New York Times restaurant critic who has chronicled her own battle with weight loss. Still, she said, “I’ve never seen such an outward, in-your-face celebration of eating fat.”

I'm sure Mimi Sheraton is aware of a singular fact: fat is delicious. It makes food taste good, and provides mouth feel that can't be found with any other ingredient (ok, maybe collagen). I'm sure she's also aware that you don't have to eat a meal in order to taste it.

Jason Perlow gets it, to a certain degree:

“The whole foodie lifestyle and diet I used to participate in — I’m not going to say it is unhealthy, but it is excessive,” [Perlow] said. “I think you can still keep the food very interesting, but do it in moderation. That’s what the food community of the future is going to have to be.”

To which many members of the Fat Pack say: Shut up and pass the pork butt. Among a certain slice of the food-possessed, to suggest that indulgence might put one’s health in peril is to invite ridicule.

“I think enjoyment of food has never proven to be harmful to anyone’s health,” said Mr. Shaw, who turned from practicing law to writing about food in the late 1990s with an article for salon.com defending fat guys. He still cultivates a persona in print and online as The Fat Guy, and at 5-foot-10 weighs about 270 pounds.

I clock in at 6-foot-2 and tip the scales at 185. When I get up to 190, I know it's time to integrate some more spinach into my diet. I will say I benefit from pretty good genes: small-boned Jewish folk and tall, thin Scandanavians. But I'm not an idiot, either.

Restaurants usually serve about three portions on every plate they bring to the table. If you finish that plate, you've just eaten three meals. A woman I worked with solved this problem by asking for her to-go box at the beginning of the meal. She'd take half her plate, put it in the to-go box, and eat the remainders. She didn't eat what she couldn't see. And at over 40 (there was some speculation) she stayed thin and fit and dated men 15 years her junior. For her, the portion control seemed to work just fine.

In America, we're trained to stop eating when the food is gone, not necessarily when we feel full. Perhaps it stems from issues of waste that came out of the Great Depression or WWII. The French, on the other hand, have learned that food is a pleasure. It exists to fuel our bodies, yes, but it's also there for enjoyment. And like that anything that's to be enjoyed, you don't want too much of it at a sitting.

It seems like the Fat Pack could use a little self-discipline. Those braised pork ribs swimming in grease, that double-cream sauce, or those delicious cheese fries aren't going to vary considerably from one bite to the next. Well, the fries will. They'll just get worse and worse and worse as they cool on the plate. So, my advice is simple: stop eating so damn much! If you want to review five meals a day, take three bites of each, and fill that gut with vegetables and good, wholesome foods between meals. Your heart (and my ultimate healthcare bill) will thank you in the future.

Dress it up; dress it down

I've been trying to eat healthier. This doesn't mean I've given up bacon or bratwurst. I'm only human, after all. And not an idiot. But it does mean I might forgo the second bratwurst in favor of a salad serving and might limit myself to two slices of bacon rather than four (or six....or...eight). But imagine my surprise when I began looking at salad dressings' ingredients lists: of eight dressings or marinades currently in my refrigerator, only one is free of high fructose corn syrup. And on the remaining dressings, HFC doesn't fall way down on the ingredients list. It falls no lower than fifth, and on two dressings, the balsamic vinaigrette and the honey mustard dressing, it is second, coming only after distilled water.

But none of us has to stand for this. Salad dressings aren't some alchemical secret sequestered in the ivory towers of Newman's factories. For the most part they're simple, easy to prepare and benefit from fresh ingredients (and an absence of HFC).

Blue Cheese

• 12 oz. plain yogurt (fat free is fine)
• 3 + 1 oz. crumbled blue cheese
• Juice from half a large lemon
• 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• A dash of salt
• Several to many grinds of fresh black pepper (to taste)

Combine the yogurt, 3 oz. of blue cheese, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce and salt and pepper in a blender, food processor or other high-speed mixing environment and blend until mostly smooth. Remove, and mix in the remaining 1 oz. crumbled blue cheese, for texture and taste.

Honey mustard dressing

• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1 teaspoon prepared mustard (brown, whole-grain, or yellow, depending on your personal preferences)
• 1 tablespoon honey (it helps if it's warmed slightly)
• Juice from 1 large lemon
• Salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients except the salt, pepper, and olive oil in a bowl. Slowly pour in the olive oil, whisking vigorously. Once the olive oil is combined with the other ingredients, season the dressing to your liking with salt and pepper. (Science content: In this recipe, the mustard acts an emulsifier, binding together the water molecules in the honey, lemon juice and the mustard itself with the fat molecules in the olive oil. It may separate some in the fridge, but you'll just have to give it a quick shake to combine again)

Orange/balsamic vinaigrette

• 1/2 Cup Orange Juice
• The juice of 1/2 large lemon (you can use the other half from the blue cheese recipe. See how I did that?)
• 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 1 tablespoon honey

Combine all ingredients in a tightly-lidded container and shake vigorously to combine. You can alter the ratio of ingredients to taste--less orange juice and more lemon juice will provide for a brighter flavor. You could also substitute other ingredients for the lemon juice. Pureed raspberries, for example would provide a wonderful depth and sweetness and might make this the perfect dressing for a fresh spinach salad with feta and roasted walnuts.

Begin by heating a couple handfuls of shelled walnuts in a shallow pan over medium heat (one handful for each serving. Assume medium-sized hands). When they just begin to caramelize--the walnuts, I mean. If your hands are caramelizing, there's something horribly wrong--and your kitchen is filled with a wonderfully rich, nutty smell, transfer most of the walnuts to a waiting bed of fresh spinach leaves. Sprinkle liberally with feta cheese and top with the remaining walnuts. Drizzle with the orange dressing and serve immediately.

This salad is a study in contrasts, with the bright, sweet dressing coupling nicely with the warm, rich flavor of the walnuts. It also provides a juxtaposition of warm and cold; crunchy, crispy and smooth; and bright acidity with rich savoriness.

What to pair it with?
Salads are usually going to call for a lighter wine, most often a white varietal. For the walnut salad, I would recommend going with a heavier Riesling, like the Blackstone 2005 vintage. This crisp, clean-tasting wine will complement the dish well, providing nice counterpoint to the walnuts heavy, smoky flavor. The wine is a little hotter than you might be used to--12.5% alcohol content--but that bit of heat provides it with a nice backbone to stand up to slightly heavier dishes than you might normally associate with a Riesling.