#114 - HFCS breakdown.

a few weeks back, i decided that i was going to cut high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) out of my diet. i'd been vaguely hearing a consistent rumble of "HFCS is horribly bad for you" chatter recently. HFCS will eat you & your children & your children's children if you keep consuming it. i guess that chatter built up inside of me to a level where i was all "i should not be eating this." i mean, if starbucks is capitalizing on the trend, it must be true. it was a feeling i got about fast food after watching super size me, one that resulted in a ban on fast food that i eventually gave up on & the net effect of changing my overall dietary habits & eating fast food less...so i've been reading a lot of labels recently, selecting juices over sodas, fruits over yodels, hippie chips over doritos.

...but if i was going to bother changing my dietary habits, i wasn't going to do so without finding out a little bit more about HFCS & why it sucks so bad. those on the pro-HFCS side argue that it's made from corn, which the indians gave to us when the pilgrims first arrived here, so it's totally good for you. in reality, HFCS is produced by milling corn into starch & then processing that into syrup before adding enzymes that turn it into a fructose, which results in something pretty far removed from corn.

those against HFCS consumption link it to obesity, diabetes & a range of health problems. one study found that almost half the HFCS-containing products they tested also contained mercury, which is all toxic & whatnot...so it's sort of a problem when it's in friggin everything. humans & mercury in most quantities don't mix. as a sf chronicle article from 2004 about HFCS notes, "the theory goes like this: the body processes the fructose in high fructose corn syrup differently than it does old-fashioned cane or beet sugar, which in turn alters the way metabolic-regulating hormones function. it also forces the liver to kick more fat out into the bloodstream. the end result is that our bodies are essentially tricked into wanting to eat more and at the same time, we are storing more fat." i knew there was someone to blame!

anyway, it's fun to see the pro-HFCS and anti-HFCS folks battle it out. the corn refiner's association has launched a website called "a sweet surprise" to give the corn-inhaling public the true facts about HFCS. they even have a page that debunks all the"myths" about HFCS. there's this sweet HFCS propaganda ad. love that top! it's spawned a bunch of spoofs, including this hilarious one & this one, which features a conversation between two livers. there's even a crude two-part short film called "HFCS ninjas," which focuses around ninjas plotting to take over by implanting HFCS in the food supply. part two apparently contained something owned by warner music group & they hate youtube, so the audio track on that part's been disabled. oh to be a young with a camera & a love of ninjas & swearing.

#114 - HFCS breakdown.
snack: caramel chocolatey chunk rice krispie treat
drink: turkey hill pomegranate lemonade



so...after a few weeks HFCS free, i slipped & then eventually broke down. not thinking, one night, i poured a bunch of ken's french dressing with applewood smoked bacon onto my luscious salad & said dressing totally had HFCS in it. then, last week i was "hanging" around my apartment with my roommate, feeling a bit parched & peckish, so i took off for the preferred local bodega. i only had a few bucks in my pocket when i arrived, so in the interest of both economy & my desire for maximum sweetness, i decided to set the HFCS ban aside with a caramel chocolatey chunk rice krispie treat.

snap, crackle & pop manufacture their tasty rice krispie treats in a laboratory seven strata beneath the earth's surface out of HFCS & approximately fifteen other ingredients melded together from across the periodic table of elements. the result is the most unnaturally chocolatey caramel deliciousness possible. growing up, my mom used to make the slightly more natural peanut butter version for us (a brave move given her peanut allergy), so i grew up only occasionally trying the homemade marshmallow or caramel versions, but to this day, still have a warm spot in my heart for all things krispie treat.

my roommate had a bottle of turkey hill pomegranate lemonade that he was tearing through & he offered some up to wash down my rice krispie treat. i've had turkey hill's beverages in the past & one word comes to mind every single time i have them--"crack." seriously. i used to spend time at my ex's place out in jersey & we'd make trips to the pathmark supermarket that'd often end with me purchasing & consuming an entire half-gallon of their lime iced tea in a single evening. it's just that flavorful & crackalicious.

the pomegranate iced tea is no exception. since it's jacking up pomegranate & iced tea with a bunch of HFCS, it's as sweet as a monkey knife fight & very hard to resist downing all quicklike. as my roommate commented, "i'll definitely finish that entire bottle tonight." when i woke up the next morn, i found that he was a man of his word. since that night, i've had a couple glasses of coke, but managed to keep the HFCS consumption mostly at bay. one thing i've definitely noticed since i first started cutting out HFCS--the belly/waistline area has gone through some reduction. now if i could just find some way to be motivated enough to tone that area up, i could knock people around with my abs. anyway, starting tomorrow...back to the ban. F-U-C-K- H-F-C-S.

nosh nook #100 - saturday, august 1, 2009

how america eats has changed; snacking is the new meal (link)
07.30.09 - the register herald (beckley, wv) - by john blankenship

straight out of brooklyn, the $5 slice (link)
07.30.09 - the ny times - by manny fernandez

sorry for the nosh nook delay, folks. yesterday morn was a little off the normal schedule for me. i was planning on heading to liberty park for the all points west fest (more on that debacle to come later), so in order to leave work at a reasonable enough time, i planned to get into work at the SHOCKINGLY early time of 9:30. when i woke up yesterday morn to pen a nosh nook about john blankenship's thursday piece about how america's meal habits are becoming more snack like, i came across this OTHER ny times article & decided i just had to write about that instead...so i waited on it til today. plus, it's the 100th edition of the nosh nook so i like to be happy with the pieces tied to randomly important sounding numbers. i know...excuses, excuses.

so this times article by manny fernandez focuses on di fara pizza, a new york legend located in the midwood neighborhood of brooklyn & run by a 72-year old guy who only uses ingredients flown in from italy. they recently raised the price of a slice to $5, which is a big deal to a lot of people because as fernandez notes, "the price of a slice has long been one of the city’s unofficial economic indicators." even bloomberg's had something to say about it. “the real question, relative to the local economy, is whether people are trading up from a $2.75 slice or down from a $25 entree, and from what i hear in the subways and on the streets, it’s probably a mixture of both. but if you’ve ever had a really great slice of pizza, you know there are worse deals.” ok bloomy, we get it. you ride the subways like us regular folks.

a mother of a friend of mine works somewhere in the public sector in a job that has something to do with the city economy, so they contacted her for this article. she let them know that they should contact her son, who i've heard rave about di fara at least once a week for months now. while he didn't provide an official comment, he told his mother to tell them that "hell yeah it's worth it." i haven't tried it yet myself, but don't see anything wrong with paying $5 for a slice if it rules that hard. anyway, the times article looked at it from a slightly different angle (more with the ties to the greater economy), but it's a topic that the ny post already reported on way back on monday, so i wonder if some scooping happened here. mmm...scooping.

nosh nook #99 - thursday, july 30, 2009

the lump sum: washington's best crab cakes (link)
07.29.09 - the washington post - by jane black

ok. true confessions time. in my handful of trips to the d.c./virginia area (still haven't seen baltimore other than from the highway & on the wire), i've still yet to try the area's crab on any of my visits. no steamed crab, no crab legs, no crab cakes. maybe one day i will. i probably should. i hear it's their regional dish & all. funny...during my entire recent trip to chicago, i didn't have a single hot dog either. what's my problem (other than the obvious)?

since they apparently love a challenge, jane black & the washington post food section tried twenty-five different crab cakes as part of a search to "define and discover the best local examples." the most well known ones typically feature lumpy sweet crab with "old bay seasoning, lemon juice herbs and a binder such as eggs, mayonnaise or bread crumbs" for flavor, but there are obviously variations.

of those they tried, the better ones were the ones with jumbo lump meat like those at blacksalt, kinkead's & johnny's (the "more refined" places) & those at jerry's seafood and at g&m (both "more rustic but equally impressive"). these were all relatively straightforward takes on the crab cake, but little variations like the minced jalapeno at blacksalt made for nice additions.

it turns out that the crabs at a lot of these aren't even from the area. the chef at kinkead's gets maryland crabmeat "about eight months a year" & a lot of places get their crabmeat from the gulf coast or the carolinas. those at jerry's come all the way from venezuela, which you'd think would be blasphemy, but both chefs & the post tasters agreed that it's still cool. what was most important to the post tasters? that "they should always taste good." um, i could have told you that.

phew. i made it through that whole thing without making a "got crabs?" joke.

nosh nook #98 - wednesday, july 29, 2009

from street vendors to red hook restaurant: calexico rolls out flavor (link)
07.28.09 - ny daily news - by veronika belenkaya

dude. the vendys are less than sixty days away! 9.26 bitchez! do i dare fork over eighty simoleons to go? don't they have some sort of press pass that's free? something you just flash at people & they let you through & give you tasty food? calexico, last year's winner of the top prize, has since opened an online store with t-shirts & gone on martha stewart. i also read somewhere that they cater in the f'n hamptons...how swanky. anyway, i was checking out the menu from their soho cart & seriously...they have a black bean soft taco with something called "crack sauce." if we learned anything from the eighties, it's that you can never go wrong with crack.

...so now calexico is totally turning their vendys triumph into the creation of an actual physical calexico location here in brooklyn, on union st in red hook. as the daily news explains, calexico is the brainchild of three brothers from the california border town of calexico. since opening the soho food cart back in 06, they've "worked seven days a week, 16 hours a day," "saving money from burritos" to raise enough money to open the restaurant, which has "all of the cart's famous items, including shrimp grits, salads and sandwiches - and nothing on the menu costs more than $8." plus you don't have to go to stupid soho to get some! i am so going to me eat some calexico soon. mark my words.

you know...in nyc, we could essentially have a sort of minor league system for restaurants, a system where they start out as food carts & trucks, test the waters, see if there's enough of a customer base for opening something not on wheels. i write a HILARIOUS weekly neighborhood column for fuckedinparkslope that covers every business in park slope & since that makes me an expert, let me tell you...SO many restaurants come & go these days & by starting as a food cart or truck, you not only have the low overhead thing going for you, but you have the current food cart/truck trend/buzz going for you. in some ways, it'd be better. hopefully, there'd be less failure...something we could definitely use less of these days.

nosh nook #97 - tuesday, july 28, 2009

cheesestrings reinvigorates cheese snacks category (link)
07.27.09 - talking retail

oh man. i'm glad i'm not the only one who noticed. the cheese snacks category has been seriously asleep at the wheel lately & it's about time somebody did something about it & gave em a good shot in the arm, woke em up a bit. scientific fact #1: cheese is good. scientific fact #2: kids like cheese. scientific fact #3: kids like individually packaged cheese the best. if said cheese is all natural & has a mischievous mascot named "mr. strings," that's all the better.

that's why the u.k.'s cheestrings have just released "cheesestring shots," a snack designed to please even the least obstinate, least lactose intolerant lil bugger you know. usually cheestrings deals in string cheese, but according to talking retail ("the hub for grocery retail"), they're building "on the cheestrings portfolio" when these AMAZING NEW SNACKS hit store shelves in the next few months.

the cheestring shots are apparently "another fun way to eat cheese." they come in sachets (whatever those are...probably something british). "each sachet contains lots of little cheese pieces for children to shake, before tearing open at the top and shooting the contents straight into their mouths." um. sounds dangerous and/or pornographic. in conclusion, cheese is a good thing...& they probably should've had somebody proofread this piece. it's bad form when your company's name is misspelled in the headline.