Portion, schmortion

The FDA might get realistic about portion size

February 8, 2010

Ever gotten disgruntled over the fact that a “serving size” — of, say, tortilla chips or Oreos — listed on a package is much smaller than you’d like it to be?

So is the FDA, which wants manufacturers to get realistic about portion-size labeling. Because, after all, who really eats just six tortilla chips or two small cookies and then calls it quits?

As the New York Times points out,

Still, the solution is not as simple as merely bumping up the standard portions for some foods. Officials worry that could send the wrong message. If the serving size for cookies rose to two ounces from one ounce, for instance, some consumers might think the government was telling them it was fine to eat more.

Triple-washed?

Wash those bagged salad greens a fourth time

February 5, 2010

In Consumer Reports’ latest look at food safety, the magazine purchased national brands of bagged and boxed salad greens and tested them. Their findings? Despite those labels promising that the lettuce is “triple-washed,” you’d better wash it all again to try to remove the unpleasant-sounding “fecal contamination.” And oh, yeah, organic wasn’t any cleaner than conventional — at least with regard to these microbes.

Truth in advertising

Lists of confusing food claims

February 4, 2010

Tara Parker-Pope, who writes the New York Times Well blog, recently pointed out an article listing confusing food labels and what they really mean. Some of the labels, Parker-Pope noted in her post, are simply meaningless, including “made with real fruit” and “a good source of fiber.” In other words, it might sound good, but it might not be.

Under pressure

Pressure cookers make a comeback

February 3, 2010

Pinched by time and pennies? Get a pressure cooker. No, not the explosive kind of yesteryear; today’s models are safer and efficient, and can put comfort food on the table in less than half an hour. As Catherine Phipps blogged last month for the Guardian, “A pressure cooker removes the need for either soaking or long cooking times, so evening meals can be on the table relatively quickly.” And Civil Eats’ Paula Crossfield, blogging recently on Bitten, quoted cookbook author Lorna Sass (Cooking Under Pressure): “I’m an impatient cook. If I have an appliance that allows me to eat a delicious lentil soup about 15 minutes after the idea comes to mind, that’s my idea of a great appliance.”

Increasing the food vocabulary

Words matter

February 1, 2010

Would expanding our vocabularies help us to be healthier humans? »

Worst of the wurst

The death of the German butcher

January 29, 2010

The January issue of Smithsonian magazine has a unusual article about meat: its cultural history in Germany (big), the number of artisanal butchers remaining in Germany (not so big), and the chances of Germany retaining its meat-preparation traditions (pretty small). As the author, Andrew Blechman, points out, “In Germany, the shunning of local butchers amounts to the repudiation of a cultural heritage.” When even the butchers go vegetarian (as one butcher Blechman profiles did), what are the odds?

The dark side of dairy

AlterNet exposes the dairy industry

January 28, 2010

You may already know that the U.S. dairy industry, despite the images on milk cartons of happy cows grazing in bucolic fields, isn’t exactly a pretty picture. AlterNet’s Tara Lohan takes a closer look at our bovine mess, discussing the logical consequences of dairy on a large scale: hormone and antibiotic overuse, milk overproduction, and all those extra calves (because, really, the only way to get cows to keep making milk is for them to keep having babies) sold for meat or simply left to die. Makes Laura Grace Weldon’s cow look all the more lucky.

E. coli everywhere

Even in grass-fed cows?

January 27, 2010

In a recent article on Slate, Texas historian James E. McWilliams warned beef-eaters that grass-fed cows weren't necessarily free of deadly E. coli contamination. McWilliams — the against-the-foodie-grain researcher whose book Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly is an unconventional mix of calls for agricultural reform and acceptance of the GMO status quo — says that Nina Planck and Michael Pollan, among others, got it wrong when they claimed that feeding cows grain encouraged the evolution of E. coli O157:H7, the strain that has repeatedly sickened American diners over the past couple of decades. His main concern for eaters? Skip the steak tartare.

Farm wars

Why do there have to be two sides, anyway?

January 26, 2010

Russ Parsons suggests ways to bridge the divide. »

Snack time

Or not

January 25, 2010

Do our kids eat too many snacks? »

Meat man

The Atlantic’s new meat column

January 22, 2010

Culinate contributor Giovanna Zivny recently pointed us toward the Atlantic’s new meat column, written by Tom Mylan, a Brooklyn-based artisanal butcher. The mag’s online Food Channel describes Mylan’s butcher shop, The Meat Hook, as being “at the vanguard of the movement to promote locally sourced, responsibly raised meat.” And maybe bring back old-fashioned, know-your-butcher shopping, too.

BPA redux

The FDA’s new opinion on the plastic ingredient

January 21, 2010

It ain’t so great in breastmilk, either. »

Alfalfa in court

Monsanto goes to the Supreme Court

January 20, 2010

Sugar beets might be affected, too. »

Pop that corn

Today is National Popcorn Day

January 19, 2010

January 19 is National Popcorn Day. Why that day, you may ask? (Especially since Halloween, with its concomitant popcorn treats, seems more seasonally appropriate.) Apparently it may have some connection to the Super Bowl. Whatever the origin story, the cold winter months are a good time to pop a bowl and flavor it up, from plain ol’ butter and salt to Ellen Jackson’s peanut-butter fave.

Haitian help

Get food and water to earthquake survivors

January 18, 2010

Want to help out the survivors of the recent devastating earthquake in Haiti, but not sure how? Check out the Huffington Post’s roundup of charities, agencies, and other organizations funneling money, goods, and volunteers toward the beleaguered country. Don’t want to scroll down? The HuffPo also has an online store where you can buy items, such as water-purification tablets and protein biscuits, to be sent directly across the Caribbean.

Jason Epstein, on eating

The editor’s newly published memoir focuses on food

January 15, 2010

A New York editor discusses his love of food with Charlie Rose. »

The caveman diet

Is it better for you?

January 14, 2010

The latest version of the Atkins Diet, as reported recently in the New York Times, is a macho variation known as the paleo lifestyle, or more bluntly, the caveman diet. The theory? Prehistoric peeps hunted and gathered, so modern-day humans should eat as if they were slinging spears and wielding berry baskets.

So meat (sometimes raw), veg, and fruit are in; bread is out. Fasting — on the concomitant theory that the ancients probably went for long periods in between meals of mastodon — is also de rigueur. And exercising, at least for one member of the movement, can be brutal:

His workouts include scooting around the underbrush on all fours, leaping between boulders, playing catch with stones, and other activities at which he believes early man excelled.

Meat-eating vegetarians

An oxymoron or not?

January 13, 2010

Newsweek suggests sacrificing yourself for battery chickens. »

Is there dirt on school gardens?

A critic targets gardens

January 12, 2010

There’s a furor over this month’s anti-school-garden piece in ‘The Atlantic.’ »

Teen detectives, round two

Artisanal food that ain’t

January 11, 2010

On Facebook recently, Gourmet’s former Web editor, Christy Harrison, noted the latest round of teen food detecting: fancy food that isn't. Here’s the list:

Two high-school students armed with DNA barcoding tech uncovered quite a few food shenanigans in New York City markets. Examples include expensive “sheep’s milk cheese” made from cow milk, “venison” dog treats made from beef, and “sturgeon caviar” that was actually Mississippi paddlefish.

The students, from the same school that did a similar science stunt last year on sushi, worked with scientists to match up DNA sequences in the tested foodstuffs. Not all foods, however, were identifiable:

Only canned foods were processed at such high temperatures as to break DNA strands and make them often unidentifiable.