High-Five, Low-Five

Now, I like the idea of food companies using fewer ingredients in their products. What I don't like is the transparent marketing. Much like the "low carb" label craze and the deluge of "low fat" products (Wow! Low-Fat Apples! Um...duh) of the previous trend, we're now starting to see foods that normally contain few ingredients being repackaged and marketed for how few components they have. 

Just yesterday at the market, I saw a man buying a pint of Haagen Dazs' new Five Milk Chocolate ice cream. As you can see on the container (and if you check the ingredients), it contains SKIM MILK, CREAM, SUGAR, EGG YOLKS, COCOA PROCESSED WITH ALKALI.

Sounds pretty good, right? Nice and simple. 

However, the ingredients listed for regular Haagen Dazs chocolate ice cream are CREAM, SKIM MILK, SUGAR, EGG YOLKS, COCOA PROCESSED WITH ALKALI. 

The only difference between the two products (if there is a difference), is the predominance of the skim milk vs. cream. 

So, I'm just saying, don't be taken in. I am a fan of simplifying things, but just make sure you're not just paying a premium for the name. 

"It's on the menu, but I wouldn't order it if I were you."

Nobu is now telling its patrons not to eat the bluefin tuna on the menu because it is endangered. The menus in the London restaurants now offer some "advice" to diners, stating that the pricey fish is "environmentally challenged" and that they should ask their server to suggest an alternative. 

This move comes after a five-year campaign against the chain's refusal to stop stocking bluefin. 

Personally, I don't see why they don't just take it off the menu, but you know how these "celebrity restaurants" can be. Or something. Very, very strange. It's weird enough to me that a restaurant would knowingly stock an endangered species, but what of the forewarned consumer who orders it? 

You can read more about it here. 

The Life and Times of a Yogurt Pioneer

Daniel Carasso, who helped turn Dannon yogurt from a small family operation to a global company, died last week at 103.  

What was once a traditional yet obscure "ethnic" food is now so much a staple, we rarely give pause to the fact that sixty, seventy years ago, it was still considered a strange specialty product.

As someone who loves yogurt, I found this to be an interesting read. Nobody does tasteful obituaries like the Times. 

Today's math lesson

Today, I learned one of the basic equations dieticians use to help determine how many calories a person needs. While there are other, possibly more accurate methods to come up with the appropriate number, this is great for giving you a general idea. 

You multiply body weight in kilograms (1 kg = 2.2 lb) by 25-30 calories, depending upon the level of activity. 

So...

a 140-lb person weighs about 64 kg ( because 140/2.2=64)

If this person is very sedentary, they can calculate their caloric needs by multiplying 64 by 25.

64 x 25 = 1,600 calories/day

If they are very active, they multiply 64 by 30.

64 x 30 = 1,920

If the person is moderately active, they can find out the average of these numbers to determine how many calories they require a day. 

Parisians in America: Everything is bigger at Dallas BBQ

Some family friends from Paris have been in town this past week, and my mom has been showing them around New York. Chris and I met up with them for dinner a couple times, but this afternoon, he opted out of a lunch engagement at the Dallas BBQ in Times Square (vegetarian-friendly fare isn't exactly their speciality). The ladies wanted ribs, so ribs it was. 

This was definitely an experience...No wonder America has an "obesity epidemic." The portions were huge and the prices were low. I dig a good value and all, but most of the food wasn't the type it's great to double-or triple-up on. But hey, when in Rome—or Times Square. 

I ordered their spinach salad with rotisserie chicken and asked for the dressing on the side. It was really good, but I had to take almost half of it home! I totally lost steam. I also enjoyed a freaking goblet of diet coke and tasted the "onion loaf." What a strange place...

Mushroom-Hunting Adages

I've been reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma the past week-and-a-half. I was just reading a chapter about his mushroom-hunting experience in California and felt compelled to share this paragraph, found in the middle of page 383:

Ben and Anthony had a slew of these mushroom-hunting adages and I collected them over the course of the day. "Seeing is boleting" means you never see any mushrooms until someone else has demonstrated their presence by finding one. "Mushroom frustration" is what you feel when everyone around you is seeing them and you're still blind—until, that is, you find your first, thereby breaking you "mushroom virginity." Then there's the "cluster fuck," when your eyes are on and other hunters crowd you, hoping your good fortune will rub off. Cluster fucking, I was given to understand, was bad manners. And then there was the "screen-saver"—the fact that after several hours interrogating the ground for little brown dunce caps, their images will be burned on your retinas. "You'll see, when you get into bed tonight," Ben said, "you'll shut your eyes and there they'll be again—wall-to-wall morels."

Learning to Love Soy Milk

I've never been a huge fan of soy milk, but this morning, I tried using some of the Whole Foods 365 Organic Vanilla Soy Milk in my oatmeal instead of water. It actually came out all right. The consistency was a bit gluey for my taste, but overall, it added a nice mellow flavor and a natural sweetness. 

I don't know if I'd use it in oatmeal again, but the soy milk definitely has a lot of important vitamins and minerals. For example, one cup provides half the daily value of Vitamin B12, something that's hard to get if you don't eat much meat. The soy milk has also been fortified with Vitamins A, D, and E, among other things. It also has a lot of calcium. I'd much rather get that stuff from real food instead of supplements (albeit fortified real food).

I'll have to play around with it, see what it tastes good in to me. I'm planning to buy a blender soon so I can start making smoothies. I know I've been saying that for weeks now, but because of the warm weather lately, I've been craving this frozen blueberry/strawberry/banana/yogurt smoothie I used to make when I had a blender—or access to my mom's!