How to fight obesity with....cheeeeese!

As Americans become more directly focused on their food--where it comes from, what is in it, how much of it we consume--so too does our media spotlight the politics behind it.  This weekend a surprisingly high profile (headlining the New York Times-if you didn't catch it, you most certainly should read it!) article appeared discussing the inherent conflict that occurs when our government promotes agricultural products (essentially telling us to "eat more") and fights the rising public health crisis we call obesity (c'mon guys, "eat less").

Michael Moss's article takes a good look at government check-off programs (in this case dairy)--what are essentially public relations companies funded by levies on farmers (sanctioned by the USDA) used to promote agricultural products.  Such programs invest in science to support their products as well as general marketing campaigns the most recognizable of which is the Got Milk? campaign.  Legislation prohibits these programs from using funds for lobbying purposes, but let's face it, as far as we the consumer is concerned we see advertising not lobbying.  So while checkoff programs cannot legally influence government policy per se, they are designed to influence consumers (and don't government officials drink milk and eat cheese too?).

With the USDA due to release its most recent version of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans this December (the most visible aspect of which is the Food Guide Pyramid), one has to wonder is there no conflict of interest in a government agency that supports promotion of cheese (arguably the largest source of saturated fat in the American diet) while at the same time urging Americans to reduce their intake of saturated fat?  And what will the dairy lobby have to say this go-around?

And don't get me started on the marketing campaign ($12 million!) that Dairy Management Inc. (the organization in front of the check-off program) has revamped Domino's Pizza with.  Cleverly killing two birds with one stone, Domino's has revamped its pizzas with a new line containing 40% more cheese while publicly promoting its use of REAL cheese.  Commercials take doubting customers to the Wisconsin farm to meet the farmer who makes their cheese, playing to the all-important social value placed on knowing where your food comes from, while conveniently ignoring the exponentially increased amount of fat now present in their products--clever marketing indeed.  With pizza as one of the most commonly consumed junk foods, it's a great place to dump extra cheese (and accompanying calories) with nobody the wiser...because fat makes things taste good and hey, we're not complaining...but maybe we should be.

Lessons? I love pizza (and cheese) as much as the next guy but we'll never change our food environment until we as individuals can learn to think critically about food, not just listen to what they tell us.  (Which is exactly what they--the food industry--spend billions of dollars trying to get us not to do, because it's so much easier to believe a smartly crafted advertisement than cultivate individual analytical thought).  Look before you leap, think before you eat--who and what are you really supporting?

Halloween Horror....Hospital food dressing up as....REAL FOOD

This semester has gotten away from me and the frequency of my blogging has consequently suffered...well, luckily, a recent stint in the hospital has given me the undercover opportunity to report on everybody's favorite, hospital food.  Who makes it? Why is it so gosh darn awful? And most importantly, for "at risk" populations who are forced to consume this subsect of (dare we call it) food, why is it so nutritionally bereft?

My first hospital meal (pictured) consisted of that good old American standby, meat and potatoes.  Cubes of tough beef were stewed with chunks of potatoes, accompanied by "whipped" potatoes (which tasted suspiciously like the freeze dried, just-add-water variety) and ambiguous greens (perhaps some form of frozen spinach?).  As someone who prides myself on my culinary skills and general healthful diet I was appalled and could barely stomach what I am sure was the unhappiest of factory-raised cows, let alone synthetic potatoes.

Breakfast left more to be desired, rubber pancakes and questionable sausage sticks with a sickly sweet cherry syrup.  The lunch (right) that followed was a bologna sandwich--thin slice of bologna (the most processed of meats made from all the leftover bits they don't use, squeezed into a square with preservatives and then sliced to deli perfection) between two buttered slices of white bread accompanied by a packaged piece of wheat bread, a boxed salad with french dressing (and a loving dose of high fructose corn syrup), fruit salad (the only edible portion of the meal) and a cup of highly salted lentil/vegetable soup.

While farmers markets have been popping up near and around hospitals for a few years, there is a still a big gap between fresh fruits and vegetables outside the hospital and the food that is prepared within hospital walls.  Understandably proteins and carbohydrates are an essential part of maintaining healthy weight and energy in sick patients, but this doesn't mean the food must a) taste like rubber or b) lack any other nutritive benefit.  Our society (and hospitals) are suffering from a categorical distinction between food and nutrition.  When we think of nutrition implies fats, sugars, carbs, calories, nutrients, vitamins and minerals....science.  Whereas food symbolizes restaurant eating, the food network, cooking, pleasure, locavorism....an aesthetic.  We won't be able to treat hospital patients with good food until we realize that nutritional and pleasureful eating can be one and the same.  If positivity plays a major factor in healing, shouldn't appealing, good food be a factor in nutrition, most especially in a hospital environment?
photo courtesy of my new favorite blog: cutestfood

If Nature Drank Soda...

In yet another round of food industry semantics, PepsiCo has reformulated their lemon-lime soda Sierra Mist as Sierra Mist Natural.  In response to market research claiming consumers are more likely to buy "natural" foods and beverages, PepsiCo has changed the Sierra Mist formula, eliminating high fructose corn syrup as well as chemical preservatives, reducing the beverage to "five simple ingredients and nothing artificial".  In fact, their new ad campaign (into which PepsiCo has put an undisclosed dollar amount equivalent to a "full year's worth of media investment"...which, lets face it, is probably a TON of money) features "nature" discussing its cravings for the drink, followed by the tag line, "The soda nature would drink if nature drank soda". 

Blatant anthropomorphism aside, this seems the most recent example of big food business playing off consumers' assumption that "natural" equates with "healthful".  In fact, eight fluid ounces of Sierra Mist Natural contains 25 grams of "real" sugar (the original Sierra Mist had 26 grams of high fructose corn syrup) which equates to over 75% of the USDA's allowance for discretionary calories from added sugars (assuming a 2,000 calorie per day diet).  What is "real" sugar? Most likely a blend between cane and beet sugar, although the "real" just supplies consumers with another syntactical stumbling block (or mental comfort--"real" standing as a value judgment for "good").

Speaking of fun food industry word games, the Corn Refiners Association is petitioning the Food and Drug Administration to change the name of high fructose corn syrup to something that the American public doesn't equate with "unhealthful evil,"  namely the much more benign "corn sugar".  Essentially, the corn industry is worried that we consumers have realized that the huge amounts of added sugar they put in everything aren't necessarily good for us; they think if they can use some fancy footwork they will effectively pull the wool back over our eyes by disguising added sugars under the much nicer name of corn sugar (corn, after all, is natural).  The scary thing is, they are probably right.

NYC or bust!

After another Time Warner internet snafu (put them on the list of things I don't love about NYC) and a lovely month on the West Coast (which I still personally feel is the best coast but I'm working on my bias) I'm back in New York and ready for fall.  Had you asked me in August what I love about NYC I would have been hard-pressed for an answer...the humidity gets to me--I don't do well in it and don't pretend otherwise.  The city is sticky, smelly and generally overrun with confused tourists and the disgruntled locals who lack Hampton-getaways.  But this last week running around getting ready for school, watching the city refill with the post-labor day rush of New Yorkers working back into their city routines I have to admit, I too heart NYC.

They say that culture is so ingrained in our everyday lives, such an integral part of how we live, breathe and eat that we are hard-pressed to observe it from within.  Within classical genres of academia the study of foreign cultures is a fine balance between "going native" and maintaining the objective eye.  It's the minutiae, the tiny details you don't realize that define your role within (or outside of) a culture.  Die hard West Coaster that I am, I could swear up and down until I'm blue in the face that I will never succumb to being a "New Yorker" but that would be a lie...it's rubbing off.  Here are three things I forgot I loved about NYC:

1) Bagels.  This is kind of a no-brainer--you don't have to be a New Yorker to love a good bagel.  In fact, you can get them anywhere in the world so what makes NY bagels special? They're big, they're doughy, and if you ask a bagel-purist to toast it for you they will scoff at you as if you are from Nowheresville, Nebraska and not the apartment upstairs.  Thick with cream cheese or as the ubiquitous breakfast sandwich bagels are one of NYCs great contributions to Americana.  Trust me, they are just better here.  

2) Jay-walking. I didn't realize until I came back but I never press the crosswalk buttons here...why? Because most intersections don't have them (and for those that do, the buttons are decorative pedestrian placaters)! Lights are timed, crossing is on-the-light or as-you-dare.  You have to admit it's slightly more sanitary that pushing buttons touched by who knows how many overeager kiddos and impatient elderly. (Begs the interesting question: are crosswalk buttons at all effective in the age of computer-controlled traffic signals or do they exist merely to satisfy some primal urge to exert control over our environment?)

3) Street-music.  Nothing like being serenaded by the orchestral sounds of Metro buses, taxi horns, FDNY sirens and subway saxophones.  It can be loud and obnoxious but it is easy to forget how enjoyable it is to sit in Washington Square Park and listen to impromptu street shows while the city whirs by.  Welcome back and welcome home indeed!

August Workcation

In an effort to beat the humidity and visit the family in one fell swoop, I escaped the stifling confines of August in NYC for the cooling summer effects of my native California.  Certain familial complications have resulted in my mom and me spending hours on end working my father's garden with almost total responsibility for the survival and upkeep of innumerable tomatoes, a virtual orchard of apples and a more-than-unruly potato patch.  7:30 am raspberry harvests, fruit fly infestations and backache aside, my august workcation has been surprisingly therapeutic.  It has made me look twice at my own presumed locavorism.

With food gleaning ever-more high profile recognition, from the great egg recall to the latest "it" foods to the great food truck race, it begs the question: the more we see/read/view our food, are we more or less connected to it?  Farmers markets are the latest locale for the visual comestible smorgasbord, where a little dirt creates an aura of authenticity and that "fresh off the vine" vibe.  Having spent the last three weeks living off the bounty of my own family's garden I've realized that maybe just eating locally isn't what locavorism should be about. (Garlic marinated roasted red and yellow peppers, delicious! Fresh-from-the-tree apple tarte tatin? Yes please.)   I'm all for reducing carbon footprints, supporting local farmers and eating less processed more healthful foods, don't get me wrong, but is it possible that focusing on farmers markets instead of superstores, organics instead of factory-produced has been reduced to a game of advertising semantics--are we missing the message?

Having given myself some distance from New York City (it seems I needed the physical for the sake of the mental), I realize how easy it is to get caught up in the faddishness of it all, to forget that eating local should be about more than paying for the label (and the peace of mind that comes with it).  After harvesting a bushel of tomatoes (alright, it was less than an actual bushel, allow me the term metaphorically), it was time to convert the harvest into a preservable food supply, also known as Aufmuth pasta sauce.  While slicing the freshly dug garlic cloves I realized that not only is eating local dirtier and more labor-intensive but it represents an incredibly satisfying engagement of the physical senses.  It is tactile and sticky, fragrant and decaying, it literally embodies our living cycle.  Maybe it's my California-hippie roots rearing their ugly heads, but it made me realize how much we miss when we focus merely on the labels and images and lose all of the work and the physical energy required for the "farm fresh"--we seem to have lost sight of how incredibly visceral the edible experience can be.

In short, just because we buy "organic" doesn't bring us any closer to the man (or woman) who grew it.  Perhaps engaging food should be more about entertaining trends or watching someone else do the cooking.  With food awareness poised in the forefront of the American conscience, we should remember that the hands on approach is generally the best learning experience...and the most satisfying.

Air fare...or lack thereof

If Steven Slater's shenanigans have taught us anything it's that a) avoiding the wait on the JFK tarmac is worth committing felonies and b) air travel just isn't what it used to be.  Disgruntled flight attendants aside, flights longer than two hours have become a Ghandian exercise in self-preservation.  That is to say, where the heck has all the food gone?

Frankly, I've never been overwhelmed by in-flight meals...something about witnessing 250 previously-frozen-now-radioactive packages being passed aisle by aisle doesn't do it for me, but damnit if I'm not starving after 6 hours from New York to San Francisco.  My most recent cross-country journey afforded me a first-hand peek at those few rogue passengers attempting to beat the system and simultaneously survive their very limited personal space with on-board sustenance, as well as the few hundred others of us who didn't. 

The cleverest of passengers trade in contraband, those "outside real world" foods that actually make it through the security checkpoint.  I have yet to see a full meal get successfully past TSA (I'm talking burritos--they are portable after all--maybe a nice tupperwared pasta or a deli sandwich), although smaller snacks abound.  Most popular among these are the obvious: apples, bananas, fruit and nut mixes, carrot sticks, pretzels (if one is so unlucky as to be flying on an airline that offers NO free snacks whatsoever....yes I mean you, American), and of course assorted less-than-healthy nibbles along gummy bear/mike-n-ike lines.  When I witness a co-passenger pulling out a Trader Joe's labeled snack bag I think to myself, "Here is someone with foresight, someone who plans ahead, cares for their welfare and will thereby be effective in an emergency situation".  These are the people you want to align yourself with in case of emergency or flight-attendant mutiny.

Then there are those who fall prey to the airport cuisine (if TGI Friday's, McDonald's and Sbarro can be called that), knowing full well their on-board options will be limited.  This group of travelers possesses expendable resources and a hearty appetite yet lacks the wherewithal of those in the first category.  These are the misguided souls who feel that wasting $15 for a sub-par wrap or less-than-authentic sushi in the terminal will ultimately be rewarding mid-flight, and who fail to realize they are really supporting the very system they believe they are bucking.  Airport food most generally sucks, and what with airlines now serving little to no food at all, an all-out passenger boycott and a handful of clever restaurateurs could really turn things around terminal-wise (an attempt to do just this is being made at La Guardia, for now I will reserve judgment).

The third category of passenger are the foodless, those who pass the hours examining what everyone else may or may not be eating. These travelers are split into two separate groups, the stubborn old-schoolers who believe in-flight snacks are a god given right (and damnit if they will spend $12 for a bullsh*t Lays snack pack), determined to starve it out at all costs and damn The Man! (I fall into this category); the second are the naive Europeans who have yet to realize that domestic American carriers really screw you over both monetarily and gastronomically.  There is, however, a proven test to distinguish between these two sub-categories lest you be confused: the stubborn Americans maintain more of a teeth-clenching, temple-pulsing rage while the faces of the unsuspecting Europeans become more gaunt and drawn as the hours drag on.

Over the course of 6 hours I witnessed a family of three savor and suckle the remaining half a tin of winterfresh Altoids while up in business class they were enjoying a choise of cedar-plank smoked salmon or New York strip steak (complete with accouterments) accompanied by a crisp Northern California Chardonnay or a robust Cabernet Sauvignon, respectively.  Perhaps classicism comes with the territory but it seems largely un-American to relegate all of coach to the fickle whims of large-scale conglomerate snack producers...or maybe that it is so wholly American is what makes it so upsetting.  I'm beginning to think Mr. Slater was really onto something...

Ode to Round Table

Considering I currently reside in what many people (erroneously, in my opinion--cue angry New Yorkers) believe to be the mecca of pizza slices, I often wonder why my belly pines for the Round Table pizzas of my childhood.  No NY slice will do--frankly I've never been over the moon about thin crusts, unevenly distributed cheese and anything requiring origami acts en route to my mouth (I'm surprised an NYC pigeon hasn't targeted me for all of this pizza-blasphemy) and in Manhattan that's pretty much the only way it comes.

Pizza is such a big to-do here, in fact, that statisticians have actually used mathematical calculations and occurrences of online reviews to deduce New York's favorite slice.  No two sources (authoritative or otherwise) can agree, what with over 5,000 yellow pages listings for pizza it's no wonder.  In the year that I have been living at the center of the "pizzaverse," I have sampled my fair share--from late night slices to full-blown pies, Sicilian (thicker crust, more cheese) to Neapolitan (your classic Italian-American NY style)--and have yet to be wildly impressed. (Lombardi's pizza--one of NYC's most famous pictured to the right)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not eschewing pizza entirely yet I rarely find myself inspired to eat that extra slice.  Most striking, there is very little variation.  While Manhattan generally considers itself the center of the culinary universe, the world of pizza is kept on a tight leash, never straying from the standards and keeping the crust a strict quarter inch thick.  You'd think with a city full of chefs making the most of what they've got, someone would think to do something about that damn pizza!  Maybe it's nostalgia that's holding me back, but give me a Round Table any day--savory rich sauce (none of that "grandma's recipe" sickly sweet stuff they have over here), prefect three-cheese blend (spread like a blanket for the toppings to nestle in), that not-too-thin/not-too-thick crust--nothing in New York compares.

We talk a lot about nostalgia and food: how it can play tricks in your mind, make flavors seem more than what they were.  Round Table for me is chock full of memories: girls nights when dad worked late, Monday night football dinners, slumber party snacks--that pizza smacks of family and friends and good eatin'.  To this day, though, the pizza is just as good as it was when I was five years old--no matter how full I get I can always eat that extra slice (I've been known to accomplish impressive gastronomic feats involving the family classic, a large pepperoni)...and it's damned good leftover/cold/and just about any other way.  I'm off to California in a few days and my mom and I already have our RTP date set.  There are some things I can skip on the rare occasions I get back to my homeland (god forgive me In-n-Out), but not that pizza.  Cheers to safe travels, happy homecomings and my all-time favorite slice.

(I'm not the first person to be wooed by RTP's culinary charms--and most certainly not the last.  This man wrote his own ode to the pie.)