July | 2009 | Slow Food Fast

Best new (fantasy) fresh produce ad

Posted on July 29, 2009 by DebbieN

A few posts back I was daydreaming of a new campaign by the Ad Council promoting fresh produce. I’d thought the “Got Milk?” campaign would be something to model it on.

Washington Post columnist Paul Farhi, who was doing live chat with readers this week about why, when, and how fast food ads on tv started turning so skanky, has a more inspired take. After a fair number of comments on the increase in raunchiness of burger ads targeting 15-35 year old men, we get this exchange:

Okay, all this talk about burgers : is about to ruin my diet. I’m leaving the chat to go find some healthy fruit to snack on.

Paul Farhi: Opening scene: Long shot of Scarlett Johanssen strolling a city street. She stops at a corner grocer.

Close up: Apples, bananas, pears, etc.

Scarlett fondles the fruit seductively as wah-wah music rises up in background.

Close up: Scarlett enjoys eating fruit, in a kind of lascivious way.

Voiceover (Scarlett): “Fruit. It’s so sexy.”

End of ad.

So there you go. I wonder if Colin Firth is available for something involving asparagus?

Filed under: Eating out, Food Politics, Vegetabalia | Tagged: food ads, fresh produce, Paul Farhi | Comments Off on Best new (fantasy) fresh produce ad

“High Protein Bran Muffin”–A good idea gone bad?

Posted on July 28, 2009 by DebbieN

This is what’s wrong with American thinking today:

That muffins are healthy, or as in the example below, “healthful”
That bran muffins are really healthy and therefore can be eaten big
That such healthy muffins should be eaten as a source of protein.
That muffins this perfect can and perhaps even should be eaten as a substitute for meals.

Exhibit A, from a recent “Culinary SOS” recipe request column of the LA Times Food Section.

Dear SOS: Have you ever tasted the muffins at —–‘s Bakery? They are huge, delicious, healthful and so satisfying. There is a particular favorite of mine, a high protein muffin that, when eaten, makes one glow inside and feel healthy all day…
–Shirley

Dear Shirley: These generously sized muffins pack a medley of flavors and textures in every bite. A batch’ll go quickly — they make for a fun, quick breakfast or perfect snack.

Well. Can’t wait. Let’s take a look at the ingredients list as given in SOS.

High protein muffin
Total time: 45 minutes plus cooling time Makes 14 muffins

1 (12-ounce) can frozen apple or white grape fruit juice concentrate
2 1/4 cups wheat bran
1 cup (4 1/4 ounces) flour
3 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 1/4 cups buttermilk
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons canola oil
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup sesame seeds
1/2 cup shelled pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup flaxseeds
1/2 cup coconut
1 1/2 cups granola
2 cups raisins

I’ll skip the instructions–they’re involved and painful. All I’ll say is, the recipe involves boiling down Ingredient #1 (and wasn’t that a shock in a health muffin recipe) and still throwing some of it out.

Now the nutrition. I have to say I’m tempted to use the ingredient list as a small practical quiz to see if anyone can ballpark the calories, fat, carbs and sodium per serving from it. Anyone? Anyone? No? OK, then. Fasten your seatbelt. Or perhaps just your belt.

Each muffin: 515 calories; 11 grams protein; 54 grams carbohydrates; 9 grams fiber; 32 grams fat; 5 grams saturated fat; 62 mg. cholesterol; 742 mg. sodium.

Now wait a minute. 500+ calories? for a muffin? 700+ mg sodium? 32 g fat? For that much fat and salt you could eat a chunk of cheddar almost the size of a deck of cards. Straight.

Anyway, this is clearly one overloaded muffin, with tons of expensive extras. Heavy too–or why the 7 teaspoons of leavening for a single batch? And the irony is, after all that stuff, it still only delivers 11 g protein per muffin. You could get that with a large glass of skim milk.

But you know what’s really sad about this muffin recipe? It’s not alone. Even the classic Weight Watchers Cookbook recipe for bran muffins still weighs in at 300-plus calories per and 500-plus mg. sodium.

What gives? Should we simply not eat muffins? Can a bran muffin recipe ever be actually delicious AND low-fat, low-salt, moderate-carb, and perhaps, dare we dream it, less than 200 calories per, so you don’t feel stupid not having asked for something a little more actively delicious for the same calories–maybe a croissant or a slice of flourless chocolate cake instead? With, obviously, raspberry coulis?

How would you go about it? Maybe it would be better to go with something like the cake-style gingerbread recipe in the Silver Palate Cookbook–makes 12 servings with a lot less starch (1 2/3 c. flour), no nuts and seeds and extras, only one egg, only 1 1/4 t. baking soda, a bunch of gingerbread spices, 1/2 c. oil you can skip in favor of applesauce with no problems at all and a huge cut in calories, half a cup each of sugar and molasses or honey, some boiling water right before baking, and that’s pretty much it. You can even microwave it for about 5-7 minutes at half power instead of baking it conventionally.

Now granted, it’s not bran–but it could be at least whole wheat without ruining the aesthetic. It’s not 500 calories a square either–by my reckoning more like 120 in the applesauce version, and something like 150-200 mg sodium. And no one expects it to substitute in for a meal’s worth of fiber and protein, but with raisins and whole wheat flour, it would probably have 4-5 g fiber and you could always serve it with skim milk.

If you’ve convinced yourself that nothing but a “high-protein” muffin will do, and simply drinking some milk with it isn’t glamorous enough, throw in a packet of nonfat powdered dry milk. But really, unless it’s your only meal of the day, you don’t actually need the added protein. Muffins weren’t made to be steak.

Finally, why make huge muffins? Unless you want to end up looking like a Mack Truck, make decent medium-sized or cupcake-sized muffins, and if you’re still hungry afterward, eat an apple. And drink a glass of milk.

Filed under: cooking, DASH Diet, Grains, Revised recipes | Tagged: bakery, DASH Diet, hidden calories, hidden salt, muffins, recipe request, Silver Palate | Comments Off on “High Protein Bran Muffin”–A good idea gone bad?

Suing for Salt

Posted on July 24, 2009 by DebbieN

The Center for Science in the Public Interest is supporting a New Jersey man’s class action lawsuit against Denny’s Restaurants after private talks apparently failed to convince the chain to lower the exaggeratedly high sodium content in its meals. Apparently CSPI combed through the nutrition data on the Denny’s web site. A couple of sample readings:

Denny’s double cheeseburger–3880 mg
Denny’s Meat Lover’s Scramble–5,690 mg
Denny’s “senior” menu scrambled eggs and cheddar cheese meal–2,060 mg
Spicy Buffalo Chicken Melt, and a side of seasoned fries–6700 mg sodium, 1700 calories

The lawsuit was filed in Superior Court of New Jersey in Middlesex County, and seeks to compel Denny’s to disclose on menus the amount of sodium in each of its meals and to place a notice on its menus warning about high sodium levels.

Filed under: DASH Diet, Eating out, Food Politics | Tagged: CSPI, Denny's, Food Politics, nutrition labeling, restaurant chains, salt | Comments Off on Suing for Salt

Corn Season: I’m not supposed to laugh, am I?

Posted on July 18, 2009 by DebbieN

I picked up my daughter yesterday afternoon and took her to the supermarket to pick up some fish for dinner. My daughter had bright–really bright, excessively bright– green hands, knees, and socks from a last-day-of-camp blowout involving something called “Ooblech!” (stretchy slime made of cornstarch, water, and way too much food coloring). It was so bright even the security guard at the entrance gave her a huge grin. It might have been because he was thinking how much washing I was going to be stuck with, or what the inside of my car must look like, but the fact remains. He grinned.

Although I generally don’t buy my vegetables at the supermarket due to (ahem!) food price allergies, they had very decent nectarines for 49 cents/lb., a genuinely good deal, and ears of corn at 2/$1, which isn’t the best price ever but also not bad. And my daughter’s a known and dangerous corn freak.

So I was opening the ears of corn for her inspection. Surprisingly enough, she was the one who recommended that she not actually touch the corn this time. Very dignified, considering. But it didn’t last.

As we were sorting through the bin, a lady standing next to us turned to me and asked, puzzled, “Is it corn season?”

I gawked, I’m sorry to say. I tried not to. I know it’s not Oklahoma! here or anything, but really. It’s mid-July in Pasadena, hotter than Hades (finally, after a cool and cloudy couple of weeks known in LA as “June Gloom”). The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye, right? The supermarket’s dropped its normally inexcusable dollar-an-ear price to something approaching reasonable. All the signs are there. If not now, when?

And then I got real and remembered that for most Angelenos, there really is only one season: air-conditioning. So I took pity and a deep breath and said “Yes” as gently as possible.

My husband doesn’t see what’s so funny. When I tell him, the only thing he says is “August.” He ought to know, I suppose, since he grew up in southern Illinois, where they actually grow corn. But he eats the non-green corn without complaining.

Filed under: Vegetabalia | Comments Off on Corn Season: I’m not supposed to laugh, am I?

Unbranded Cabbage Salads

Posted on July 18, 2009 by DebbieN

OK. Put my money where my mouth is–right. Red cabbage is a favorite vegetable for me because it’s cheap, substantial, cruciferous and crunchy, and it tastes good raw. Also, and this is key, you can do neat kitchen chemistry tricks with it, like use it for a pH indicator or to reveal secret invisible ink messages written in baking soda slurry. Amaze your friends! Baffle your enemies!

I like red cabbage as a salad vegetable–it’s bracingly radishy when mixed with sweeter lettuces, but sweet and crisp against romaine or arugula. I don’t shred it for a chopped salad–decent bite-sized pieces are more satisfying, crunch better, and stand up to all kinds of salad dressings. You can make it with the more usual tomatoes, but I like oranges because if there are leftovers, the next day, the juice from the red cabbage will have combined with the acidity from the oranges and turned them both a range of brilliant magentas–very cool.

Tie-Dyed Salad

Mix about equal quantities of:

Arugula or romaine
red cabbage, chopped in bite-sized pieces, ~1″ across
red or yellow (or green, your choice) bell pepper, in bite-sized pieces
orange (s), blood oranges or tangerines or etc. peeled, sliced crosswise, any seeds removed

Nice additions: Shred a few leaves of basil if you have it, chop or sliver a few Greek olives, toast some walnut pieces, crumble feta or goat cheese. Or gorgonzola.

Dress with any of these:

olive oil and red wine vinegar (few spoonfuls each), cracked black pepper–my usual weeknight preference
ordinary spicy brown mustard mixed half-and-half with plain yogurt
tehina (sesame) paste mixed 1:3 with plain yogurt
yogurt and/or buttermilk with minced garlic, chopped basil and dill, and a squeeze of lemon juice
yogurt and/or buttermilk with lemon juice and gorgonzola or bleu cheese crumbled in

Variation: In fall or winter, thin-sliced crisp pear or apple instead of oranges is very good, especially with goat cheese and the toasted walnuts, and with the mustard/yogurt dressing.

Slightly more dignified salad

Reasonably balanced mixture of:

red cabbage, chopped bite-sized
red or green leaf lettuce, washed and torn
good tomatoes sliced in wedges or chopped bite-sized
bell peppers chopped

Additions:

cucumber slices
chickpeas or kidney beans, or raw or lightly cooked green beans
scallion or a bit of diced or sliced red onion
any or all of: anchovies, optional, or capers, or olives, or marinated artichoke hearts, or flaked tuna, or hard boiled eggs cut in half

Filed under: cooking, Vegetabalia | Tagged: low-salt, salads | Comments Off on Unbranded Cabbage Salads

Brand Me! Or, How to Commercialize Cabbage

Posted on July 17, 2009 by DebbieN

Earlier this year I made a joke about the marketing campaign for fresh bulk vegetables, along the lines of “Red Cabbage. It’s What’s For Salad.” I was thinking how nice it would be if people could be motivated to buy ordinary fresh bulk vegetables–no brand names, no packages–every week as a matter of habit the way they did 30 years ago, instead of the way they now fill their carts with brightly colored boxes of processed stuff. I thought it would probably take a satirical approach like the Ad Council’s Got Milk? public service ad campaign.

Clearly I wasn’t thinking hard enough about the real issue driving the relentless replacement of food with boxes. As with the Internet, it’s branding. And not surprisingly, there’s an awful lot of spam out there (hints of The Viking Song in the background…and a word of caution: as with many Monty Python sketches, this one contains more than a few off-color lines and screeching in addition to the main ingredient.)

The packaged food industry is way ahead of me and has been for years. They’ve figured out how to put brand names on cabbage or broccoli or carrots so they can charge more for it–several times more per pound. And they’re doing enormously well with this ploy.

Ordinary shoppers — your neighbors, your co-workers, your mom, and you too, I bet— have in the past week or so bought a little packaged bag of pre-washed spinach, Euro Salad Mix, baby-cut carrots, or broccoli and cauliflower florets. To save time, you tell yourself. Because it’s more gourmet, perhaps. And you’re getting your vegetables in, you think. But it becomes a habit, and a needlessly expensive one.

This kind of thinking about vegetables is becoming dangerously ingrained among American shoppers. People think they’re eating healthy without the fuss, but then they complain how expensive vegetables are. And no wonder, if they shop like this.

Because the few vegetables you get in the precut packs in pristine plastic bags are less than a pound. 12 oz. is typical for broccoli and cauliflower florets, 5-6 oz. for pre-washed mixed lettuces. Prices are at least $2.00 per bag, and often on up to $3.50 or more. Yes, Virginia, that’s anything between $3 and $9/lb for the “convenience” of just opening a bag.

I bring this up here because packaged, pre-shredded cabbage, an 8-oz. bag no less, was listed, actually listed, as a key ingredient in a recent (and no I didn’t really mean to be picking on them again so soon) Bon Appetit feature recipe online. One for “Fishcakes and Coleslaw”. It was part of a slideshow series illustrating “gourmet cooking on a budget”, glossy photos with convincing price tags included–but this one recipe cost $14 for four servings!

Continue reading →

Filed under: cooking, Food Politics, Vegetabalia | Tagged: Ad Council, Bon Appetit, branding, food branding, food industry, food magazines, Food Stamp Challenge, frugal, Got Milk?, packaged foods, pre-cut vegetables, shopping, Spam, supermarkets, vegetables | Comments Off on Brand Me! Or, How to Commercialize Cabbage

“But it’s organic! But it’s vegetarian!”

Posted on July 14, 2009 by DebbieN

Vegetarian and organic foods are gaining popularity in supermarkets around the country–it’s been happening for at least a decade. Vegetarian- and organic-seeking customers assume they’re getting something closer to fresh if it’s labeled vegetarian or organic, and most of them also assume that vegetarian automatically means healthy. So, apparently, do nutrition researchers when they’re not really thinking hard enough.

The American Dietetic Association recently announced–again, updating from 1997–that vegetarian and vegan diets can be healthful at all stages of life from infancy onward and posted suggestions for getting started. Keyword here is “can”.

The idea of easing into a less-meat diet in stages by cooking familiar foods and familiar ingredients as far as possible is understandable. The Vegetarian Nutrition practice group of the ADA is trying to reach people they think are likely to panic at the suggestion of not eating meat. Unfortunately, the suggestions that top the list are mostly for processed meat substitutes, jarred pasta sauces, canned beans, boxed rice mixes and the like, rather than a dietary framework for eating fresh whole-ingredient vegetarian foods.

In the health section of the LA Times online, where I first read about the ADA’s statement last week, many reader comments objected to this approach primarily because the major brands of veggie hot dogs and hamburgers tend to have long, improbable ingredient lists and very high salt. After a casual tour of the sauces-soups-and-rice-mixes section at my local Whole Foods, it’s an objection I second even more strongly.

For several years now I’ve had reservations about the processed food industry’s tendency to throw salt at anything and everything. Vegetarian and organic food is supposed to be better. Fresher, better-tasting, realer, more nutritious, healthier, more responsible for the planet, the animal world, and the customer. In a word, BETTER.

Nice intentions aside, most of the vegetarian and organic products companies these days seem to be trying as hard as they can to keep up with or even surpass the meat-eating Joneses–the big-brand pantry staples from Stouffer’s, Swanson’s, Kraft Foods, Campbell’s, and so on. They’re still claiming the health and planet virtues of vegetarian and organic, but they’re actually processing the hell out of their foods, adding all kinds of laundry-list mystery ingredients, and salting them out of all reason. And health-and-planet-conscious consumers are flocking to them without bothering to look hard at the nutrition labels. How have we come to such a pass? Continue reading →

Filed under: Beans and legumes, cooking, DASH Diet, Food Politics, Grains, high-speed soup, Revised recipes, Vegetabalia | Tagged: American Dietetic Association, convenience foods, meatless cooking, nutrition, nutrition labeling, organic foods, processed, processed food, vegetarian, vegetarian diet, Whole Foods | 4 Comments »

How to Nuke an Eggplant

Posted on July 12, 2009 by DebbieN

After microwaving 10 minutes, the eggplant has collapsed

Eggplant is one of those warm-climate foods. It’s big, cheap, and plentiful, it goes with everything from garlicky oregano-and-fennel laden tomato sauce to nutmeg-tinged custard or cumin/cinnamon-scented Greek and North African dishes, to curries and darkly soy-glazed Chinese and Thai dishes. You can deep-fry it, panfry it, grill it and serve it room-temperature under a glossy layer of olive oil, marinate it, wrap it around other fillings, stuff it, roast it, make spreads with it… There’s even a Greek eggplant “spoon sweet” and at least one eggplant “jam” from Morocco. To say nothing of pink-tinged sour eggplant pickles, one of my favorite additions at the Israeli felafel stands.

The only thing you don’t really want to do with eggplant is eat it raw.

I NEVER bother with the usual cookbook directions for eggplant. All of them slavishly recopy instructions from their predecessors–salt it, drain it, fry it in tons of expensive olive oil, which it will soak up mercilessly, bake it for an hour only to find it still has spongy raw spots… They never bother to update, or even retest, the traditional assumptions that make eggplant such a pain.

You can forget most of that if you just nuke your eggplants first. Most of the stuff people do to their eggplants comes of just trying to get it cooked through. The salt’s to get rid of some of the water; the fat’s to cook it hotter and let the juices steam inside the slices.

Microwaving takes care of both, needs neither fat nor salt, and it’s very quick–10 minutes on HIGH on a pyrex pie plate for 1 or 2 decent-sized eggplants and you’ve got either collapsed whole eggplant(s) ready for baba ghanouj or a fan of slices or a mountain of bite-sized cubes. All of them cooked through and ready to do something more interesting with.

I used to think I was alone in the wilderness on this one, because NO ethnic cookbook–or any other cookbook with eggplant recipes–ever considers the existence of microwaving, much less condones it for cooking actual food. Continue reading →

Filed under: cooking, DASH Diet, Microwave tricks, Revised recipes, Vegetabalia | Tagged: aubergine, baba ghanouj, eggplant, eggplant parmigiana, involtini, Mediterranean diet, melanzana, mezze, microwave cooking, microwaved eggplant, Middle Eastern cooking, vegetarian cooking | Comments Off on How to Nuke an Eggplant

Naked Lunch: Nutrition labeling law in effect for California Chain Restaurants

Posted on July 1, 2009 by DebbieN

California’s not the first state or municipality to require restaurants to declare their nutritional stats to customers, but as of today, the state will require chains with more than 20 in-state locations to post calories, carbs, sodium and fat information for each menu offering. The new law also bans sales of soda and junk foods to students at public schools–a big step toward reducing empty calories and sodium consumption among children and teens.

Patt Morrison of Pasadena-based public radio station KPCC interviewed the California Restaurant Association’s senior vice president for government affairs and the executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy.

Surprisingly enough, the CRA’s representative said the association actually backs the legislation in its current form. When asked whether similar New York City legislation had had any effect so far, the CCPHA director said it had–chain restaurants had started reformulating popular high-calorie foods back downward. He also gave demographics: 89 percent of Democrats and 78 percent of Republicans polled said they were in favor of the new law. Most of the callers to the show also said they wanted or needed to know what was at the end of their forks. A fascinating interview all the way around.

Filed under: DASH Diet, Eating out, Food Politics, kid food, nutrition | Tagged: California, chain restaurants, David Kessler, dietary information, Henry Waxman, nutrition labeling, Nutrition Labeling Education Act, Patt Morrison, public health, restaurants | Comments Off on Naked Lunch: Nutrition labeling law in effect for California Chain Restaurants

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Copyright, Disclaimer, Affiliate Links

Best new (fantasy) fresh produce ad

“High Protein Bran Muffin”–A good idea gone bad?

Suing for Salt

Corn Season: I’m not supposed to laugh, am I?

Unbranded Cabbage Salads

Brand Me! Or, How to Commercialize Cabbage

“But it’s organic! But it’s vegetarian!”

How to Nuke an Eggplant

Naked Lunch: Nutrition labeling law in effect for California Chain Restaurants

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