nosh nook #181 - monday, november 23, 2009

cupcake complaints aired to weymouth school committee member (link)
11.23.09 - weymouth news - by ed baker

since launching the nosh nook back in march, i've written about a ton of cases where folks are in a tizzy about their kids' nutrition, especially at school. i've featured so many stories about crusading moms & initiatives & legislation that sometimes i feel like the "won't somebody please think of the children" angle is the only story being told in the world of food. i'm not saying that it's not important that kids eat healthy, but it's starting to get old. i can only come across so many "five hip, healthy, after school snacks for teens" articles before i snap & start taking hostages. are there really moms out there who still haven't figured out that carrot sticks are better than doritos? if there are, do we really need to force it down their throats through legislation & initiatives & news story after news story? don't we have better things to discuss?

i'm not the only one who feels this way. according to the weymouth news, there's been a bit of a hubbub in weymouth recently about a wellness policy approved by the school committee. the policy, which "establishes nutrition and physical fitness objectives for students in all grades," urges teachers to limit the amount of times that kids bring cupcakes to school for their birthdays. eventually, parents complained about the cupcake-hating policy to school committee member karen berry. she found that interesting because as the weymouth news notes, she "rarely receives calls from parents about how budget cuts will impact their child’s education, but she gets plenty of calls concerning a misunderstanding about policy on birthday cupcakes in the classroom." you hear that, weymouthians? where are your priorities?

the policy was put in place back at the beginning of 2007, which was fairly early in the recent healthy kid craziness, so parents should be used to it by now. as it is, cupcakes aren't even banned by the policy. all the policy does is "suggest that teachers limit the number of birthday parties they hold in their class each month and encourage healthy food consumption by students." although she was part of the committee that initially put the wellness policy in place, karen berry wishes that "people would be as attentive to the budget challenges rather than an eight-year-old who would be crying because he or she could not bring a cupcake to a birthday party at school." that's some shoddy english right there, but you get what she's trying to say. they put the policy in place. now it's time to move on to something more important. let's stop wasting so much time on cupcakes.

nosh nook #180 - sunday, november 22, 2009

a kid's idea, for dogs to savor (link)
11.20.09 - the ny times - by susan dominus

thanks to a bounty of boring snack-related news stories on thursday & personal laziness on friday, i decided to delay friday's edition of the nosh nook to today, where i'm bringing you a TOTALLY SPECIAL weekend edition of the nosh nook. seriously, at the end of last week, the big news in snacking was that, on the heels of kraft attempting a hostile takeover of cadbury, everybody & their mother (nestle, hershey, fererro) was thinking of buying the candy egg-making british company. YAWN. i'm so sick of hearing about people wanting to buy cadbury. other than that, there was another snack mix recall. BORING.

this weekend, things have remained pretty quiet on the snack news front, but i did come across a ny times article about christian liendo, a 16-year-old "bright-eyed science buff" from queens who's trying to make snacking more fun for dogs. he had to think up a product idea for a program/competition that he's enrolled in & after a few meh ideas & some childhood reminiscing, he eventually settled on "blizzard dog," an ice cream for dogs. he started out making the doggie ice cream with "carob powder (chocolate is dangerous for dogs), soy milk and lactose-free milk" & had friends' dogs try it out. since dogs aren't always all that bright, as far as flavors go, "corn and carrot were bigger hits than chocolate and vanilla."

in the end, he ended up losing to a "young woman who made vegan cookies," but he did take home $250 & an honorable mention for his idea. he hopes to eventually take his idea to the big time & wants to do so in a unique way--the ice cream would not be sold in pet stores. it'd only be sold in ice cream stores so "dog owners won’t feel bad when they stop for a cone and their dogs whimper in longing." i don't know, christian. that sounds like a pretty specific (& possibly health code-violating) target market--dog owners out buying ice cream while walking their dogs. you might want to think bigger than that if you want to one day make "blizzard dog" a household name. as it stands, your current business plan is for the birds.

nosh nook #179 - thursday, november 19, 2009

upscale mcdonald's brings european style to nyc
(link)
11.18.09 - abc news - by karen matthews, a.p.

i've always known that mcdonald's was the hippest, coolest, most in-touch fast food joint out there. back in the 90s, they pitted larry bird & michael jordan against each other in a game of horse, with the winner getting michael jordan's big mac & the loser having to watch them eat it. so cool & totally culturally relevant. over the years, they've had their hands in some of the best movie tie-ins ever. i'm telling you, if it wasn't for the mcdonald's toys based on the film, nobody would've gave a crap about finding nemo. for the record, i still have dory & she spits water & she rules. anyway, they've been damn good about keeping up with what's radical & tubular with the world's youth & pretty much every ad campaign they spit out gets the ol' "i'm lovin it!" treatment from consumers.

their latest move: according to an abc news article taken from the a.p., mcdonald's has finally decided to bring the same chic style they've been using in france & the u.k. to the united states. after introducing the "sleek" style to european mcdonald's a few years back, they've decided that americans in chelsea, the gayest (& by default chicest) neighborhood in nyc, are finally ready for a european-style mcdonald's, complete with "outlets for plugging in laptops" & "subdued lighting." it also means that customers at the locale can now say "bye bye hard plastic seats" & "hello upholstered vinyl chairs." it makes sense. the boys in chelsea love vinyl.

paul hendel, the owner of the chelsea franchise, had this puzzling comment on the new setup. "we're becoming a more relevant type of restaurant for the younger crowd. they don't feel rushed. they're reading the newspaper, relaxed." my two cents, paul: i hear you on them not being rushed, but if you think the younger crowd is hanging out reading the paper, you need to do a bit more research. the newspaper's been dead for years, dude. you're on the right track though. a large reason behind mcdonald's embracing the loungy, european-style setup is that they finally realized that in this post-9/11 world, people enjoy taking their time & doing something while they eat. asian mcdonald's have functioned as a hangout for teens for a while now, but their cultures are WAY more advanced than ours. it's good to see that we're finally catching up though. now if we can just get a mcdonald's at MOMA, we can catch up to france.

nosh nook #178 - wednesday, november 18, 2009

leggo your eggo: there's a waffle shortage (link)
11.18.09 - cnn money - by julianne pepitone

holy calamity! scream "insanity!" will this american nightmare we're living in ever come to an end? we've got mutant flus floating around & health care plans complete with abortion provisions. the economy's spinning down the toilet bowl & last month, the yankees won the world series, essentially ruining baseball for the year. just yesterday, a certain right-wing nutjob from alaska released a brand new memoir & even though she's a bible-thumping crazypants, she's still being thought of as a 2012 presidential candidate, so the book's basically a guaranteed best seller. oh the horror! i thought having a young, smooth-talking black president who can kill flies with his bare hands was supposed to save us from ourselves, or at least from sarah palin. if that's what's supposed to happen, it needs to get to happening real quick.

...& it just gets worse as the word out of battle creek, michigan today is that kellogg is going to have a waffle shortage until some time in mid-2010. a lil neggo on the eggo, no? cnn money reports that because of "flooding at an atlanta bakery" & the need for repairs on "equipment at kellogg's largest waffle facility, based in rossville, tenn," kellogg is now forced to ration their existing waffle supplies. since the shortage "will also affect other eggo products, including pancakes, syrup and other breakfast food," kris charles, a kellogg spokesman, sent out an email telling folks to just chill out for a bit because they're "working around the clock to restore eggo store inventories to normal levels as quickly as possible." no need to panic. eggo is on it. they know how important frozen waffles & frozen waffle accessories are to your diet.

leave it to cnn to get to the heart of the matter with their in-depth coverage. as an example, i submit to you their conversation with "chad, a grocery manager at king soopers in denver who declined to give his last name" but did let them know that they were "seeing some shortage, but not much." the kroger in jackson, MS was seeing shortages, but the fairway here in brooklyn hasn't noticed any change. booyah, brooklyn! keepin them eggos flowin! so yeah, so glad that cnn let us know how three random stores in three random cities are doing eggowise. they also let us know that "eggo enthusiasts took to the internet to mourn the shortage" & provided two random examples from two random twitter accounts to back up their claims. thanks again, cnn. solid reporting.

nosh nook #177 - tuesday, november 17, 2009

does boston have room for more ice cream? (link)
11.16.09 - wbur - by monica brady-myerov

it's official. today marks thirty-five death-free years of life for me & as such, i'm making my way up the east coast via motorcoach for a celebratory evening of food & drinks & dirty projectors with friends in boston. it should be a radical way to pay tribute to my quickly approaching middle age. the best part? it's supposed to be below thirty degrees tonight. the temperature's going to be less than my age. how chilling!

it's obviously perfect ice cream weather, but how about fresh, custom made ice cream from a machine? can i get that? unless i want to trespass on the northeastern campus, i can't get it today, but as wbur reports, next month moobella, a taunton-based company who has developed an "ice cream shop on wheels," will be turning on 100 of their machines "in cafeterias, museums and food courts around new england." they already have one of their machines on the northeastern campus & according to one student "it's a really cool machine."

sure it 's a cool machine (what machine isn't cool?) that creates ice cream for you while you wait, but what sort of effect will it have on the overall ice cream experience? wbur spoke with lynda utterback, from the national ice cream retailers association & she's cool with it, since people aren't going to decide to "take the family to a machine" instead of hitting up mom & pop ice cream joints. plus, as she notes, "there's always room for more ice cream." you said it, ms utterback.