Edible Intelligence

Great Food Science Videos.

2012-01-06T12:44:00.000-05:00

Childhood Obesity

2012-01-04T14:57:00.002-05:00

This is sort of a blog request from @WineePamela after some tweets I wrote about how to fight Obesity. I've written about weight loss before, but I really feel weird about doing it because I'm a pretty big guy. I guess I'm like a coach, where I know all about the game but I wasn't the greatest player.

If you are really concerned that kids are too fat, then you have to approach things from a more pragmatic standpoint and stop with all the slogans, easy answers, and non-expert speculation. So to fight childhood obesity...

1. Parents:

When kids are little, all parents ever do is tell kids to stop running around, slow down, sit still... and finish your dinner. I thought all the hoopla over Kids meal toys at McDonald's was silly because most kids I've ever seen eat there waste more than half of their food.

So maybe be glad when the kids are doing winds sprints while giggling and if the kids don't finish their dinner... give them a little less.

2. Coaches:

What I remember the most about playing sports in middle and high school was all the punishment exercise and yelling. I got horrible anxieties before practices. Coaches do more to limit physical activity later in life than any video game console. When one guy screws around, the football/basketball/wrestling coach has everyone run wind sprints, do laps, or do some form of calisthenics as punishment. This is a horrible message to send.

3. Teachers:

Coming from a food science background, I naturally think it's an ideal subject for high school students to tie together chemistry, biology, and chemistry, but it also gives you a great background in nutrition. Kids should know what a calorie is, how to calculate the number of calories they need to maintain/lose/gain weight, and how to track their caloric intake. it's also a great way to learn which foods are the best sources of protein/iron/vitamins/calcium/potassium. This is very practical knowledge that also reinforces what the kids have already learned in school, while also reinforcing scientific method and critical thinking skills.

4. Other Kids:

Kids are mean and being fat seems to be one of the last socially acceptable forms of discrimination in this country. This is a tragic combination. Fat people in general get very little sympathy because they are just seen as sloth-like lazy buffoons. Other kids can help by not shaming or being cruel to obese kids. Furthermore, they can make friends with obese kids and include them in their physical activities. Shame does not work. If your feeling down on yourself, you slow down, stay out of view... you don't go for a walk or go exercise.

5. Food Activists:

I know you think everything is all a big conspiracy and that all processed foods are poison... but seriously, knock it off. Misinformation serves only to confuse people and prevents them from reaching a solid, science based understanding of food. Misinformation also allows people to peddle their ridiculous weight loss schemes and bilk the public for billions of dollars a years. Please stop.

6. Fashion Industry:

Pencil thin models give people an unrealistic yard stick to judge themselves and others by. We no longer think hometown girls are cute because they don't look nearly as hot as the model. This also creates a much bigger gap bewteen the beautiful people and the obese.

If you are a big kid, your clothes aren't only bigger, but they're completely different. Why? Why can't you get big sizes from Gap, Adidas, Champion, and Nike. How easy is it to get active wear in big sizes in the same style as the smaller sizes? And while I'm at it, stop putting flames or dragons... or flaming dragons on big & tall clothing. What is that? So not only do fat people feel ostracized, they have special fat clothes that look completely different.

PayPal

You should see a PayPal Donation button in this blog post and on the side of this page. I'm currently out of work and behind on rent. I've done this blog for two and a half years and have many great, informative posts. If you can spare anything... even $5, it would be greatly appreciated. The donations are anonymous, so you don't have to worry about getting an awkward half sobbing thank you from me or me pledging a life debt to you. Rent is overdue and I hope to get hired on somewhere... for something, sometime soon. So if you've read and liked my writing over the past couple years, please send a dollar or two my way. Even if you think I'm a tool, give me a buck so I can keep writing and giving you more to complain about.

Slow Food.

2011-12-16T13:42:00.000-05:00

Slow Food USA is having some sort of problem, according to the article I read in Chow. I think their problems are a little more... existential in nature.

The problem here is that the group itself is formed under a false premise. Organic/natural foods aren't intrinsically better than conventional or 'mass produced' food. You can think it tastes better as a sort of placebo effect, but nutritionally, an organic/natural version of a conventional food is the same. Asking people in this country to pay more for their food is pretty insulting and shows a complete lack of understanding about economic development.

Much of why we spend so little on food is because we have so much more money and spend it on other things, so as a percentage, we spend less on the food. There's not a lot of people buying Xbox 360's and cars and flat screen tv's in Sub-Saharan Africa. And many people there grow their own food, not because they're hip and socially conscious, but because they'd starve otherwise. As subsistence level farmers, they HAVE to decide how much food they need to sell instead of eat. Their incomes are practically non-existent.

Like most foodies, the Slow Food movement meant well, but were misguided, misinformed, and generally uneducated about food. So what they did was substitute their opinions and feelings in place of facts and then built an institution around them. To shore up that institution, they needed enemies and that's where corporations came in. Most foodies are anti-corporatist, so for them, it was easy to direct vitriol and hatred to any 'big' entity.

Thoughts, feelings, accusations, paranoia, and conspiracy theories support the cause, not science. They see science as part of the 'big' machine that exist only as Yes Men. The problem with this is that any serious critique of a foodie movement like Slow Food shows that that they simply make oversimplified, and unsubstantiated good vs evil populist claims about food.

Eggs-treme Pun-ishment

2011-11-22T20:13:00.000-05:00

First off... hello. It's been a little while. I've been busy figuring out a career of some sort and thought now would be a great time to check in with some thoughts.

So I guess most of you have heard about all the trouble with eggs in the news. Undercover video surfaced of some sort of animal abuse at Sparboe Farms.

I haven't seen the video, and I don't feel I need to in this case because my comments will be very general and only use Sparboe Farms as an example.

So here's the scenario: a video surfaces showing [fill in the blank here] which seem to always be at a facility affiliated with a giant corporation. Next, we have; public outrage, several righteous press conference by the investigative reporters involved, some threats of boycott & yada yada yada... The next thing you know, the facility is closed or the company is severely damaged in terms of finances and public perception. The secret videographers walk away proud that they've proven just how horrible a company is when it reaches a certain size.

Some things to consider:

1. The groups that film these things never seem to make their way onto a small farm... instead, they always end up on what they call a factory farm.

Why is that? Are 100% of the small to medium sized farm operations perfect, with no violations or atrocities? No. Small and medium farms are usually not associated with a corporation, so activist groups don't actively seek their demise. By the way, what is a factory farm? I don't know, I always thought that's where Cabbage Patch Dolls were made.

2. We only ever see a video on the videographer's terms.

You could see a dark and dirty barn with animals crowded together, but you'll never see footage of the guy turning the lights off and filming when the animals are only temporarily close together because some other pens are being cleaned(the reason that pen may still be dirty).

Also, we can't accurately judge authentic footage vs. staged footage. Remember James O'Keefe and those crazy ACORN undercover videos? How did that work out for ACORN? Out of business. You know what else? The videos were edited and made out to be way worse than they ever really were. It didn't matter whether it was true or not, it enraged people, and they acted hastily. Remember the Duke Lacrosse scandal? Those guys had their lives ruined... and the accusations weren't true. You get my point.

3. Bad organization or lone wolf?

Even if the video is true and the people filming just happened to be walking by with their cameras and film the horrors they saw, it doesn't tell us how the incident happened and why. Did the abuser have marching orders or did they act alone? Did we see a dirty facility on it's worst day or does it always look like that? Was the person friendly with the person filming and wanted to give them something to go to the media with? Of course, it can be a horrible culture where certain abuses are allowed, but you really can't gauge that from watching a video. I will say that large companies spend a ton of money on training for things like food safety and animal welfare. Does the careless actions of one or two employees speak for an entire organization?

4. Can a company recover from this?

This is a question about punishment. Is it a lifetime punishment for an offense or can a company correct it's problems whether they are built into the culture or the result of a lone wolf?

There was a debate last year about undercover videos and whether they should be protected. My thoughts were that rather than picking up a camera and running to the YouTube or news station with the footage, you should start with the management. The reason for that is because of #3. Did you uncover a sinister corporation that beats animals or keeps them in filth because they're evil and that's what evil corporate syndicates do or did you uncover Steve, the disgruntled townie that kicked a hen because it pecked on his foot? Believe it or not, people that raise animals or make food or even people in general want to do a good job. Chances are, if that person who filmed that footage took his/her concerns with management, they would have acted to stop it.

By the way, Sparboe Farms had an SQF audit and passed. I've been in an SQF audit, and trust me, they are no cake walk. The auditor gets paid whether you pass or not and he/she worked for an approved auditing company that has it's own reputation to worry about, so they have ever reason in the world to call balls and strikes... and trust me, SQF auditors have a very big strike zone. Even a facility on top of it's game will have a very difficult week with the auditor. A bad facility will have a very short week with the auditor, because they'll fail quickly.

So are the abuses true? Could be. If so, Sparboe Farms should be singled out, but they should also be allowed to make whatever corrections they need to make and still exist. Let's keep in mind that even-though we have plenty of activists that are essentially anti-corporatists, we have many people that work at these facilities and help run these facilities that are just regular people with bills to pay, not evil henchmen out to get you.

Why We Need To Fund The FDA.

2011-08-27T01:32:00.000-04:00

Food Manufacturing posted a story this morning about a seafood company having it's products seized due to non-conformance with HACCP. I looked up the warning letter and was amazed at how horrible their HACCP plan was. They had critical control points for holding raw fish that didn't include a temperature and a ccp for thawing frozen seafood that also had no temperature controls.

Incredible.

Then imagine my surprise when I found out they received another FDA warning letter way back in 1998. It was then that I was even more disturbed to learn that this wasn't, Meiko, the seafood company whose products were seized... this was Schneider's Fish & Seafood Company.

I looked into it and a search for "seafood HACCP" of the FDA's Warning Letter's site yielded 997 results since 1998. For those unaware, the FDA issued a final rule on Seafood HACCP in 1995. 40 companies were repeat offenders, many of which went 4 years or more between warning letters.

I find a couple things troubling about this. First, it's unclear if these places were inspected during those 4+ year gaps. Second, these are only warning letters that pertain to their HACCP plans either being inadequate or plans not being followed.

The fact that there are companies that lack complete seafood HACCP plans in 2011 is insane and points out a glaring hole in our food safety system... Inspectors. These guys aren't consistently inspecting these facilities because they're stretched way too thin. We didn't need the the new regulations that were passed earlier in the year. What we needed and still need is the staffing to enforce the laws we already have.

This would have several benefits, the most obvious being jobs. We need several thousand more inspectors in both the FDA and the FSIS(USDA). The result of this could mean that more recent college grads with food backgrounds can get a solid position and they can start paying back student loans. The money they'll get paid will go right back into the economy. Increased inspections mean more hotel and airline bookings, more eating out at restaurants, which puts more money in the pockets of the service industry workers. Government work means government benefits, which also means there will be more people insured in this country.

But even more than that is the growth this will spur in the food industry. Many companies, while concerned about food safety, may not be too worried about an inspector showing up anytime soon. This means that they get a little more lax on the cleaning and some of the upkeep. With the promise of more inspections, capital projects are more likely to be invested in, which means more hiring and more overtime, more millwrights will be employed and processing lines will get updated. As much as industry likes to complain about regulation, they also hate when a similar company has a major food safety issue because it makes them look bad by proxy. Also, it's good for timely inspections to weed out the bad seeds, and give all the other players in the industry a chance to gain market share.

It's unfortunate that political ideology has gotten in the way of sound economic and domestic policy. This, along with infrastructure spending, seems like a complete no-brainer to me.

Peak Organic

2011-07-01T22:35:00.000-04:00

I was reading farmnwife's blog(@farmnwife on Twitter) and left a lengthy comment, as I tend to do at times. I decided to post most of that comment since it was something I haven't really talked about here in any great detail. No big drawn out intro, so if you're confused, leave a comment on here or find me on Twitter @samvance...

There is an economic tipping point that is in organic's future which will doom it, that I never hear anyone mention. Basically, organic food started out costing about 75% more than conventional and as it became more popular, the prices dropped to about 40-50% more. As more people use organic, the price will continue to drop until the price equals that of conventional foods. Normally, this is where a business can finally start to compete and dominate the market, but we have to remember that organic is a more labor intensive choice to create a premium product. Meaning that farmers really only grow it because it's more profitable. At the point where it costs more for the farmer to grow than conventional(meaning that they see less profit than conventional), they will stop growing organic and switch back to conventional.

This is the reason American beverage bottlers use HFCS primarily and Mexican beverage bottlers use cane sugar... not because of a difference on philosophy, but because HFCS is cheaper than cane sugar in this country due to some trade restrictions we put on Brazilian sugar. Mexico doesn't have such restrictions, and thus, has cheaper sugar.

I'm not pro or anti-HFCS, I'm just using that as an analogy to explain what will eventually happen to organic food.

Coming Clean About Dirty Fruit.

2011-06-14T16:37:00.000-04:00

I'm sure many of you have seen the Dirty Dozen list that has been reported on in the media over the last few days. Basically, they are warning us that these supposedly healthy fruits and vegetables are laden with evil deadly pesticides. It's not that they want you to not eat fruits and vegetables, it's that they don't want you to endanger yourself by eating one of the Dirty Dozen.

Before I go forward, here is the Dirty Dozen:

1. Apples

2. Celery

3. Strawberries

4. Peaches

5. Spinach

6. Imported Nectarines

7. Imported Grapes

8. Sweet Bell Peppers

9. Potatoes

10. Domestic Blueberries

11. Lettuce

12. Kale/Collard Greens

For this Dirty Dozen list, they want you to switch to organic if you simply have to have any of these items. The people that put out this list is the Environmental Working Group. This is a group I consider very similar to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, as both groups are non-expert activists that present their agenda with zero context. For instance, Michael Jacobson of the CSPI put out an article in the Huffington Post about caramel coloring for cola where he derides the ingredient for causing cancer. As I said, these groups tend to report what sounds horrific in the absence of all context. Why? Well, if he wrote that article and said, 'but you'll need to drink 18,000 20oz bottles of cola before you have enough coloring to potentially cause cancer', you would not freak out and give his organization money.

I find it interesting that the EWG advocates for organic without finishing their story. The rest of the story is the context they are so sorely missing, so I'm here to help. I am using the calculator on safefruitsandveggies.com to show how much of each item an adult male will have to consume in a day in order to do themselves harm via the pesticides. For those of you concerned with bias, I'd like to point out that both the EWG and Safe Fruits and Veggies use the USDA's own residue data. So here for your reading pleasure is the full context version of the Dirty Dozen.

Dirty Dozen?

1. Apples - 571 servings/day

2. Celery - 133,951 servings/day

3. Strawberries - 2,640 servings/day

4. Peaches - 318 servings/day

5. Spinach - 4,487 servings/day

6. Imported Nectarines - 439 servings/day

7. Imported Grapes - No figure given. Amt for cherries is 1,171 servings/day

8. Sweet Bell Peppers - 845 servings/day

9. Potatoes - 12,626 servings/day

10. Domestic Blueberries - 306 servings/day

11. Lettuce - 15,227 servings/day

12. Kale/Collard Greens - 3,265 servings/day

It's also very important to note that these figure are based on the highest residues reported by the USDA, so this is a worst case scenario. Still scared? Remember to keep these articles you read by groups like the EWG or CSPI in context. Are they giving you numbers and context? Also beware of correlation studies and terms like 'linked'. So eat anything you want from this list. It is virtually impossible to eat enough for the residues to make you sick.

Broken?

2011-06-12T16:00:00.000-04:00

I've been hearing a lot about our broken food system lately and haven't responded because I've been a little confused over the panic.

It seems at the very least to be hyperbolic, and at most, a counterproductive and misinformed characterization of something somebody never actually understood in the first place. Here is every article on 'Our Broken Food System':

This one issue is happening. This other person had this horrible or unfortunate thing happen. Our food system is clearly broken...

Major supermarket chains moved out of Detroit(gee, I can't imagine why...). You can't get fresh tomatoes in this one place. People still get food poisoning and people still die from it. We have fat people! Did you hear me?? They're faaaaat! Our food system is clearly broken.

I've had quite a bit of car trouble in the past year, but I don't flatly declare that automobiles are inherently designed wrong. The thing is that people have their pet cause and that cause must compete with someone else's wacky theory, so they all must hitch their wagons to the 'Our Food System Is Clearly Broken' meme in order to make their pet cause seem relevant.

Our food system is not broken, but there is certainly room for improvement. Let's start with the issues I named; lack of access(food deserts), food safety, and obesity.

Yes, Grocery stores have left Detroit, but do you blame them? It's a business and not a charitable organization, despite what you would be led to believe after watching Extreme Couponers. There is a ton of overhead in running a grocery and you need a diverse group of customers to sell through the stock on the shelves while minimizing what they call 'shrink', which is waste from spoiled unsold, or out of date items. This is a community problem, though, and not a sign of some foodocalypse. What you should be seeing there are community gardens and farmer's markets popping up to fill the demand, if there is a demand. Of course, they may have to deeply discount their overpriced food, but you'll never hear the foodies complain about that... it's always the big ominous corporations that gauge the common man.

Consumers also tend to get what they demand. It's not unheard of for convenience stores to carry ripe fruits, some ripe veggies, and fresh frozen veggies or canned veggies. That probably isn't good enough for modern Food Hysterics that believe organic food has greater nutritional value, but these are poor people, and they can't afford your snooty, over-priced food anyway. It may be a challenge, but it is technically possible to get complete nutrition from 'C' stores and quick service restaurants. As the city recovers and businesses start to return, so will grocery stores.

As far as food safety goes, it's been increasing steadily since the mid to late 90's. We have the safest food supply in the world. What we are outraged about and base a claim that 'Our Food System Is Clearly Broken' on, is the 1% to 2% that still has issues. I agree that we should never stop improving in this area, but you are beyond delusional if you think that we will ever be 100% safe. That is impossible under any system. Even if you could theoretically guarantee 100% safety of all food that leaves food producers and processors, you still have ourselves to blame for poisoning each other. We routinely paw at lunch meat in our refrigerators with hands we didn't wash, and the cold environment selects for things like listeria, which causes miscarriages in pregnant women. We have manly men that insist on eating medium rare hamburgers. We have raw foodists... and well, I really don't need to say anything more about them.

But hey, Sam, what about the fatness!?! Look how fat everyone else is. Hey, here's a fat picture of you I found in a Google image search, enjoy your shame, fatty! Well, there are quite a bit of fat people in this country and I'm certainly no exception. This is due to eating too many calories and not exercising enough, creating a caloric imbalance that resulted in steady weight gain over the years. What it wasn't, was a some vast conspiracy to fatten America by the food industry. How can I be so sure? Well, the food industry makes Hot Pockets, but they also make Oatmeal, and veggies. We have thin people that eat hot pockets and we have fat vegetarians. You can lose weight eating potatoes, or snack cakes, or even McDonald's. It's our choices, actions, and genetics that determine our waistline, not some evil cabal among major players within the food industry.

I've heard other arguments claiming that 'Our Food System Is Clearly Broken', like the fact that we don't have a regional food system and the unsustainable number of food miles that our groceries travel.

Those assertions are either untrue or misleading, depending on the argument. Take a look at breweries, bakeries, and dairies for example. Anheuser-Busch has 12 breweries spread across the U.S. Kroger has more than a dozen creameries and dairies in the U.S. as well as several bakeries. McKee and Bimbo also have many bakery facilities. In the meat industry, you find poultry, beef, and pork processors in every part of the U.S. Regional food? Yeah, we've got that.

Food miles and our carbon footprint is a legitimate concern, but the issue is distorted by people who barely understand it. Let's take an honest look at the buy local movement and economics. Advocates say that by supporting small, local farms, we can better impact the community. Instead of going to the hypermarket to buy your peppers and tomatoes, you decide to go to your local farmer's market. You feel the food is better, the economy is better served, and you are doing your part to reduce the carbon footprint. The farmer you buy your tomatoes and peppers from brings about 30 lbs of each in his pick-up truck, along with his table, tent, and a chair. He lives nearby, only 12 miles away and gets 12 mpg out of his truck. You buy $6 worth of veggies and drive home. Ok, he spends 2 gallons of gas to transport 60lbs of vegetables. The semi that delivers the produce order to the hypermarket traveled several hundred miles to make the delivery and probably got 6mpg.

So at first glance, it seems that the semi has made a much bigger impact on the environment, but did it really? Let's assume the semi brings 1,000lbs of produce for a total round trip of 600 miles and gets 6mpg. That means that each pound of produce at the hypermarket is responsible for .01 gallons of fuel. The farmer's produce is responsible for .03 gallons of fuel per pound, or 3 times the amount of fuel per pound.

Now let's take a look at the economic impact. In the community, the local market pays more because the money goes directly to the farmer, but is that really a greater economic benefit? Stay with me here... ok? When you buy your produce at the farmer's market, you support the local gas station, shops where the farmer buys his stuff, and the help he may or may not pay. When you buy from the hypermarket you support, the store employees, waste management services, utilities that the grocery uses, the driver that delivered the produce, the truck stop he fueled up at, the distribution center he picked the goods up from, the distribution center employees, the growers that sell to the produce buyer, the grower's local grocer, gas station, staff, places he/she shops, etc. While the farmer's market certainly concentrates the funds from your purchase, the broader system supports many more jobs much more efficiently.

We have challenges every day when dealing with food. We need solid regulations as well as a well staffed regulatory agency to ensure safety and to make sure all the major/minor players are playing by the rules. We have problems that occur that we must deal with from time to time and long term goals we must work towards. That in no way means 'Our Food System Is Clearly Broken'. Don't buy into that doomsday speak, because it simply isn't true.

Volume

2011-05-30T00:41:00.000-04:00

I thought I would share an analogy I've crafted in regards to eating and weight gain. It's one of the last things I haven't already written about so I can bring you people a new blog without repeating myself.

Imagine you have a day off and you decided to listen to some music while you do something else, like clean the house or rearrange your bedroom.

So you turn on the stereo/music choice channel/iTunes to a song you like, perhaps as part of a playlist. You're really feeling the tunes so you turn it up a bit as you head bang and sweep or move your bed from one side of the room to another.

Next track is even better than the first so you turn it up a little more. You're loving the tunes and getting things done. It's a great day for you. From here, you get a little more excited after every 3 or 4 songs and kick the volume up a notch.

Later in the afternoon, your girlfriend/wife/boyfriend/husband/partner comes home and they are covering their ears. 'It's too loud!', they yell as they turn down the sound. The problem now is that you can't hear it, so you turn it back up. Eventually, the volume finds it's way back to where it was before. Once again, the significant other turns the volume way down, but you complain that you can't even hear the music now and he/she just sort of gives you a raised eyebrow, 'Really??'.

Turning the volume up slowly is really how many of us increase our caloric intake. You don't wake up one day and consume twice the calories. If you do, you feel way too full and sluggish, and you don't overdo it the same amount the next day. Imagine that you have a big lunch, but a normal dinner, and you follow this up with a little more food. Then every few days or every other week, you reach a new peak for eating, slowly turning up the volume.

OK, so now is when the partner walks in and turns down the volume. Instead of not hearing the music, with food, and you're still really hungry. You can put it off for a couple days, but when you give in to hunger, you give in big, cranking the volume up to where it had been. Imagine what would happen in my volume analogy if the partner walked in and turned the volume down by just a notch barely noticeable to the person listening to the music? Then a few minutes later, he/she turns it down just a little bit more. This is far more effective and works in the opposite way that turning the volume up slowly works. Eventually, you'll be comfortable with a volume so low that the partner walks in and says he/she can't hear it and turns it up.

What too many people do is reach a breaking point where they just blame everything, and therefore, banishes everything. They say no more meat, no more sugar, no more fruit, no more white foods because some journalism professor told them it was the problem. So they turn the volume all the way down. But none of us gained all the weight/fat in a day and our appetites are much stronger than our long term goals for body size. So we fail and the yo-yo pattern begins.

A couple months back, I made the leap and cut regular pop, switching to diet in the home. It's just a small step. I didn't do this because hfcs is the devil or any weird conspiracy theorists explanation... and I didn't banish regular pop entirely. When out to eat, I'll get a regular pop if I want, but I only buy the diet version for home. I singled this out as a starting point because calories from pop are the most empty and easiest to replace. I was drinking at least 3 cases a week which is 36 cans X 170 calories for Mtn Dew or 36 cans X 150 calories for Pepsi. That works out to 6,120 - 5,400 calories a week... or 1.54 - 1.74 lbs a week. It's a start and I'm not suddenly trying to run 10 miles a week and drastically cut portions, it's small steps, turning the volume down a little at a time. Next level will be adding some exercise or making a rule about only getting small sized combos when I get takeout. Again, small steps. Let me also say that this doesn't mean that you can't ever go to a buffet or have a big meal again. You just take it easy the day of the meal and the day after, and in the context of that week, you are still ok.

So that's my analogy as well as where I am. What you can do if you are what Kevin Smith calls normies - normal sized people - is not turn the volume down very far on someone else. If you doubt me, try the volume experiment yourself. Turn the volume all the way up and see how well you like it vs. turning the volume up slowly. Also, don't snicker or mock fat people in public. This one is huge... pardon the pun. Ever wonder why you don't see fat people out running or at least walking? Well, for one, they don't make tasteful athletic wear for big people(that's a whole 'nother blog) and second, they get laughed at and develop social phobias as a result. So don't drastically adjust the volume, and be supportive. See a fat person at the gym... give a high five... smile... spot them on the bench... give pointers on proper lifting technique... make a friend and stop shunning them because they are becoming us.

Creating Evil.

2011-04-30T14:06:00.000-04:00

When you hear advocates for sustainable ag and organic production talk about what they do, you are left with the impression that conventional farmers do not do those things.

If you click the title to this post, you'll be directed to a WaPo article by Eric Schlosser, Author of Fast Food Nation and co-producer of Food Inc. In the article, Schlosser writes a rebuttal to foodies being called elitist. Within that rebuttal, Mr. Schlosser makes several broad statements about food and ag. He says that modern ag is, 'overly reliant on monocultures, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, chemical additives, genetically modified organisms, factory farms, government subsidies and fossil fuels'.

Eric Schlosser wants the public to believe that modern agriculture doesn't use crop rotation, no-till, cover crops, wind breaks, grass waterways, etc. He paints the picture of 1 big, monolithic building run by an evil villain whose only goal is to poison children.

I knew about crop rotation, no-till, grass waterways, etc, before I ever knew what organic was. His charge against conventional ag is incredibly misleading, considering that organic farms also use pesticides, fertilizers, fossil fuels, and government subsidies.

I spent many years of my youth on a farm and my college education is specifically designed to give me the training to run a food manufacturing facility. Given that, I have never seen a 'Factory Farm'. This is meant as an expletive that is all too often said by people who aren't educated enough to recognize what they are looking at in a large operation. Of course, ignorance leads to fear, and ultimately, name calling.

Large operations have insanely huge input costs. To control those costs, farmers have invested in precision agriculture in the past 15 years. Many tractors now have in cab computers, gps systems, and auto-steer. Soil samples are taken all over the field and plotted with gps so variable rate spreaders can be used so the farmers don't waste a drop of the increasingly expensive fertilizer. GM crop varieties reduce the amount of pesticides needed, which also means that farm equipment is run for less hours. This means reduced consumption of fuel lowered maintenance costs over the life of the equipment.

The farm isn't the only place Eric Schlosser has fostered the view point that everyone else is evil. He also takes several shots at the food industry. He makes reference to consolidation among meat packers and then likens it to the climate that existed when The Jungle was written. It's as if having more owners would magically improve the safety of the world's safest food supply.

He talks about the food and ag system being centralized. While some companies only have one plant, most food companies set up plants in different areas of the country... you know... in regions. Of course, this must be a lie if Mr. Schlosser insists that our system is centralized and if foodies all call for a regional food system. Kroger is one of the nations largest grocer's and has it's own manufacturing, named Kroger Manufacturing. Kroger Manufacturing has bakeries, dairies, and various other facilities spread all over the country. In all, Kroger Manufacturing has over 40 facilities where food is produced. That doesn't seem very central to me.

Mr. Schlosser mentions how sick everyone is getting due to our very unsafe food supply... actually, he only mentions children, which is kind of cowardly if you ask me. He fails to mention that you can't go anywhere else in the world and find safer food. He makes a mention of pesticide residues and how bad that is for kids, but leaves out the part where residue limits are set so far below the amount that can make people sick, that it's virtually impossible to get sick from the residues. For instance, a child would need to eat 154 servings of apples in one day to get sick from the highest amount of residue allowed in apples by the USDA. To calculate your own limits, go here.

Foodies get called elitist because they advocate an antiquated method of farming that, if implemented, would leave a large portion of the planet without food(hunger is already a huge problem throughout much of the world). Any volunteers to never eat again? No? Hmm. They also scoff at how little we pay for food as a percentage of our income, which is an indicator of economic health, not personal health. Ethiopians pay a huge amount of their income(for those fortunate to have incomes) for food and they are starving. Many foodies brag about how much more they spend for food. Sound elitist? Yes. The cost of food didn't make us fat, our abundance of calories did. We're still wired to eat and screw as much as possible, so it takes a fair amount of education to get people to willfully waste calories by exercising and not eating so much. The elitist solution is to make food even more expensive for the poorest people in this country.

Agroecology: Welcome To The 1800's.

2011-03-13T22:30:00.000-04:00

Paula Crossfield from Civil Eater posted a story in the Huffington Post which references a UN study that claims to solve the challenges of hunger in an organic manner.

I suggest you all read the HuffPo article, then read the study. What follows is an analysis of that study.

Allow me to decode this report for everyone:

*Eliminate animal feed and use those inputs to make more human food. - This is entirely unrealistic, especially since it advocates feeding animals the scraps of food we don't want. Basically, there won't be enough food for the animals, so there will be less of them. Meat will be a delicacy reserved for the wealthy.

*Revert back to farm labor of the 1800's when people had to work all day to barely produce enough food for their families and caloric intakes were between 1,000 and 1,500 kcal/day.

*Sell all the food locally... meaning that everyone has to be a farmer. - The few that aren't farmers will pay huge premiums for the labor intense, niche market food. This also means you have to eat the food that is grown where you live. That could be rice or that could be cassava. Don't like either? Move... I guess.

*Spend more money and research on plant breeding, but singles out 'industrial ag'. - This is a thinly veiled knock on fertilizers, pesticides, and biotech. Replacing all that will be the way we used to breed crop varieties... when we were all starving. Breeding desired traits into crops using conventional methods does yield the same results as biotech... except it takes much longer. Years longer.

*In place of fertilizers, which add nitrogen to the soil, they advocate natural means... of adding nitrogen to the soil. - Of course, the natural methods will work(it's nitrogen too) but not as efficiently.

This whole report reads like a fantasy wish list written by a few activists without any regard for reality.

To sum up the plan...
Everyone grow organic since organic costs more money and farmers will make more.
More people will then be needed to farm this way and we'll need much more farms.
Unfortunately, we'll still be short of food so the only animal production that can be tolerated is animals fed the scraps of food we don't eat.
The rest depends on magic, apparently.

This couldn't have been written by agronomists and crop science experts.

There are some good things in here. For instance, they advocate the use of ponds and nitrogen fixing trees. They do allow for some fertilizer use where organic methods are unavailable.

The worst of what this plan does, however, is tie poor countries to subsistence level farming so that they may never develop and grow wealth.

An Example Of How Food Hysterics Reason.

2011-02-23T20:37:00.000-05:00

Mark Bittman wrote an NYT piece about McDonald's new fruit and maple oatmeal that was easily one of the dumbest attempted take-downs of a food item I have ever seen.

It was very Fox News-ish in how it conveyed facts without context. By the time people figured out the whole truth? Damage done.

And damage was undoubtedly the intent here. Sometimes it's foodists crapping all over whatever seems to be popular at the moment, but lately attacks are usually nothing more than thinly veiled anti-corporate vitriol.

The way Food Hysterics bring about a story can be understood in two recent examples; one example being Mr. Bittman's critique of McDonald's fruit & maple oatmeal... or rather, fruit & maple oatmeal's creator - McDonald's, and the other being Michael Jacobson's HuffPo piece on caramel coloring.

Food Hysterics start with their worldview and work backwards, shaping the story to meet their predetermined outcome. Bittman's beef isn't really with the oatmeal, it's with McDonald's. He says, 'The leading fast-food multinational, with sales over $16.5 billion a year (just under the GDP of Afghanistan), represents a great deal of what is wrong with American food today.' So right off the bat, you should know that everything you are about to read is a negative against McDonald's.

Food Hysterics then steal one of Fox News' more devious tricks by leaving out all context in the numbers they report. Those numbers are reported in a way to reinforce the negative image they just established. The reader leaves the article disappointed and outraged... but they really aren't too sure why. Bittman starts naming the number of ingredients and calls them chemicals without explaining what they're used for. Yes, I do realize he's being honest, but not totally. See, everything is a chemical. You're a sack of chemicals, your filtered water is chemicals(H2O), but he knows that people squirm when they hear that so it just fortifies his point. He recalls facts that are out of context, saying that this oatmeal has only 10 fewer calories than a McDonald's cheeseburger.

Correct, but let's do a quick experiment. Without looking up the nutritional facts... tell me how many calories you think are in a McDonald's cheeseburger. You have your guess ready? It's 300 calories. That means that McDonald's Fruit & Maple Oatmeal contains a gut busting 290 calories. Oh my!! That's a whopping 14.5% of your daily recommended amount of calories(based on a 2,000 calorie diet)! Not very much, considering breakfast should be the biggest meal of the day. But never mind the context... too late for that, he already has you running for the hills in fear of those massive cheeseburger calories. If you order the oatmeal sans the brown sugar, you can get down to an ethereal 260 calories and only 18 grams of sugar(32 grams with).

Mark then makes a point that oatmeal should just be the oatmeal + water and we should have the options of whether we wanted our wholesome goodness ruined with things like fruit and 30 calories worth of brown sugar. He even goes so far as emailing McDonald's to pose them this question directly. Two incredible things followed: first was that he actually reported what they wrote back and second... he glosses right over it.

Incredible thing number one: “Customers can order FMO with or without the light cream, brown sugar and the fruit. Our menu is entirely customizable by request with our ‘Made for You’ platform that has been in place since the late 90s.”

Incredible thing number two... his response: 'Oh please.'

Oh please? This must be the Food Hysteric's equivalent to, 'Yeah, but still'

'Did you hear that the moon landing was faked?'
No. We really did land on the moon.
'No, it was faked. They have multiple light sources and shadows where they shouldn't be.'
Actually, they recreated the lighting conditions and surface areas on the moon to scale and proved it was right.
'Yeah...but still'

It basically means you have no argument.

Yes the oatmeal is 10 less calories than McDonald's cheeseburger or the Egg McMuffin, but those sandwich's are only 300 calories, which means the oatmeal is only 290 calories. Not only that but the Egg McMuffin is only 7.1oz while the fully loaded oatmeal is 9.2oz. So for less calories you get a more filling meal. If your lunch and dinner had twice those calories, you would have only consumed 1,450 calories for the entire day and would most likely be running a caloric deficit.

I know this is a long post but bear with me... on to Michael Jacobson and the Center for Science in the Public Interest( CSPI ).

Jacobson's story warns of the dangers hidden in cola(which they already have a huge problem with). He starts by talking about food marketers as if there is some building in Minnesota where they all live labeled, 'Food Marketers' and they're in constant cahoots with one another. He mentions how caramel coloring is made and is all too happy with telling us there is a reaction with ammonia involved, but doesn't go so far as explaining the science. Funny, I thought science was in his organization's name?

You start to see the familiar pattern emerge of facts without context after giving away his true bias. He goes on to mention how lab rats and mice were given the coloring and formed tumors. What he doesn't mention and, more importantly, what he doesn't address in any of the comments was the toxicity. One study put the minimum amount of 4-Methylimidazole that causes cancer in lab rats to be 40 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. The most 4-Methylimidazole they found per 20oz cola was 213 micrograms or .213milligrams. Let's say someone weighs 100 Kg, they would need to ingest 4,000 mg/kg of bodyweight to get cancer. That works out to over 18,000 20oz bottle of cola in the same 2 year period as the rats. Can you drink 9,000 bottle of cola a year? If I really try, I can get down 48 12oz servings in a week. So even though I am a heavy pop drinker, I would fall far short.

But it's not about the science, is it? It's about scaring people into taking a specific action. These food hysterics are using you and your misguided outrage to shape the world the way they see fit.

A Brief Discussion Of Food And Income.

2011-02-22T13:07:00.000-05:00

Fair Food Fight, a food activist blog has recently caught my attention. They mean well, I'm sure, but the premise of many of their arguments is flawed.

The reason for their flaws seems to be that they need their ideas to always prevail while making sure certain people are always seen , not just as in the wrong, but part of a concerted effort do some harm.

So the food companies(corporations), ag companies(corporations), the products they sell, and even the government are all part of the problem in their eyes. This leaves little room for facts, which they didn't consider when they formed their ideology.

What follows is a comment I left on their blog, The Devaluation of Food, Farms and Our Future. The blog touched on other things, but I took plenty of room just responding to their call to make food a higher percentage of our income. Enjoy.

If you look at the history of agricultural and economic development, the percentage spent on food is a fairly accurate indicator of wealth in a country.

It starts at 100% or very close to it, where nearly everyone is subsistence level farmers. People were very poor because all of their money went to buying food. They were the ultimate locavores... except they were perpetually starving. The food they grew was barely enough to keep them going and that was before they had to sell some for money to buy other things.

So that extreme doesn't work. People can't go pursue other interest, because their labor is needed on the farm. Speaking of which, we needed to have a lot of kids because we needed the labor.

Saying that we need to spend more on food, doesn't necessarily mean that we'll go backwards as a nation, but it also doesn't mean we'll all weigh less. It's a flawed premise, assuming it's the cheap cost of food that makes people heavy. Over-consumption of calories is what makes people obese. We over-consume because food is much easier to find, ready to eat, and because we are too poor to be secure in our food choices.

As humans, we have ALWAYS eaten whatever we could find. Until recently, we couldn't eat enough, because we could never find enough food. So the real problem is discipline and restraint, a concept which humans are relatively new to.

You can craft a caloric budget that allows for the foods you want along with exercise to help keep the balance. You can do this with the prices of food now and especially if food is even cheaper.

I think the proper way to look at this is to say that people don't make enough money. When we live paycheck to paycheck, you are never completely sure you'll have enough to eat in the future or have the money to buy the food(as cheap as it is). So what we do is search for the best values for our money to stretch our dollars.

So if your theory is correct then paying more for that food will make people buy less of it, but that ignores thousands of years of human instincts. More likely, we'd just spend the extra money and seek out more calorically dense foods, rather than more nutritionally dense foods. When I have lot's of money, I am not so concerned with getting enough to eat. I can eat a light meal, knowing that more is available later. But as a poor person, which I most certainly am, I am much more likely to go to a buffet and consume larger meals.

So that's it. I was searching for specific ag econ graphs showing caloric consumption over the years as well as Engel Curves showing income vs food expenditures, but I got bored. Link this blog, and follow me on twitter @samvance If you already follow me, get someone else to.

Zero Tolerance Extremism.

2011-02-17T02:12:00.000-05:00

Once again, my blog title is a clickable link that goes to a food science resource. Today's resource is the faculty list of UMass' Food Science Department. I chose UMass because they were ranked as the top food science department for PhD students in the country.

Today I'd like to address the problems concerning zero tolerance in the conversation about food. It's a pretty common practice when people argue about anything, that they take the arguments to the extreme boundaries to try to make a point. So any discussion of guns leads to a world where jack-booted thugs are raping your mother while you're watching and powerless because you have no gun... or it's like a John Woo film and everyone is diving sideways in slow motion shooting everybody until we are all dead.

Get the idea?

By taking arguments about food out to the extremes, Food Hysterics hope to make their point while making you defend the most ridiculous scenarios. Just think of the movie, Super Size Me. In that movie, Morgan Spurlock wanted to prove that our(Western, mostly American) fast food diets are making us very sick/unhealthy/giving us feline AIDS/etc.

Morgan Spurlock could have set up an experiment similar to what comedian Doug Benson did in his stonermentary, 'Super High Me'. What Doug did was smoke pot several times a day, every day, for 30 days. He followed that up with 30 days of no pot. So Doug had two sets of data to compare.

What Spurlock did was not only eat McDonald's every meal, but he also(as the title suggests) Super Sized those meals. The end. This is very extreme and is meant to prove a point rather than honestly explore an issue. For instance, if he wanted to be fair, he could have maintained his normal caloric intake but only ate McDonald's and compared the results afterward. He could've binged for 30 days and then tried to lose weight for 30 days eating only McDonald's. He could have brought a registered dietitian the McDonald's tray liner with the nutrition facts on the back and planned out meals that met his needs. Nope, just Super Size it... all day... every day. Nobody does that. Nobody eats out for every meal. Hell, I'll say that most people don't even eat every meal(like breakfast).

I get flamed* by several Twitter trolls** who are anti-everything except a small garden. I have a theory that most of it traces back to an anti-corporate sentiment(which makes me appear pro-corporate for calling out their extremist views) more than anything, but they have some odd views about food nonetheless.

I was asked what my thoughts were on chemicals in food. ??? I wasn't sure how to respond because I didn't know how much they understood about food. Do they realize that all food is made of 100% chemicals? Were they referring to gras food additives and wanted to belittle them by just saying the word chemical?

So I explain that things are added to food to improve the: taste, texture, color, mouth feel, shelf life, safety, or nutritional value. The troll then wonders how many people, if polled, would say they wanted any chemicals added to their food. So now we already went to an extreme - 'any'. Of course, if that's how the poll were conducted, everyone would vote no. It's a leading question. If I do a survey where I ask people if they want to be shot through the air at 500mph, I'll bet I get nearly all 'No' responses. Does that mean that commercial air flight should be outlawed?

When I get pulled into these back and forths, I can usually see where things are heading. So the interrogation breaks down into profits for the food companies. So now I'm a shill because I explain why things are added to food. If I were a food technologist working for a large company that was needlessly adding things to food without merit, I would be pretty happy. Why? Because I would get to be the hero after I reformulate the products, ditching the wasted materials and saving that company a shitload of money. I explain that companies won't spend money on unneeded ingredients. The conversation later evolves into that person referring to everything he doesn't eat as 'shit' and says, 'people eat shit they get sick. This can be backed by 10's of 100's of studies - but of course you disagree.'

This conversation goes nowhere. It's a horrible circle that makes him crazier and more paranoid while making me dumber for responding. What people need to realize is that there is a lot of nuance in food science and food issues. Can BPA hurt you? Yup, in high enough amounts. Last I checked, the highest concentrations were found in a 15oz can of French Style green beans... and you'd need to eat 1,000 cans to get sick from the BPA.

Nuance.

People have died from drinking too much water, but we need water to live. We actually need fat and salt, just not so much. So the conversation can't be about banning or eliminating things, it has to be about moderation and educational outreach. I need the help of food scientists and food science educators out their reading this.

We have politicians wasting our time talking about the aforementioned BPA, and they have needlessly banned potatoes from the WIC program, even though they are great sources of fiber and potassium. We have people suing Taco Bell because the filling isn't 100% beef, without considering that 100% beef leaves no room for seasonings. We have a lot of hysteria out there and people are starting to just believe the negative because they haven't seen food scientists go on Oprah or The Daily Show or The Today Show, but they see plenty of Michael Pollan telling them not to eat foods that their Grandma wouldn't recognize.

We need to get out their and call out the extremists with science. Call them out when they make silly arguments and explain the science behind what's in food. If you know a food science professor or food science professional, get them on Twitter. Have them follow me @SamVance. Be warned though, you'll get bombarded with trolls who seem to have all day to try to tweet you down and then discredit anything you try to say. Hell, I even have a mock version of myself on Twitter @shitSamVancesez

* Flame - to pick apart someone's comments on the internet, usually resulting in the dreaded 'Flame War', a heated exchange that goes on for quite some time.
** Troll - A person who seeks out someone to flame. Trolls are usually limited to specific topics and not at all random. They find someone commenting on their pet subject, then they start internet arguments(Flame Wars)

Traceability: Jet Packs of the Food Industry.

2011-01-23T19:09:00.000-05:00

Lyndsey Layton wrote an article about traceability in the Washington Post today. For those unaware, traceability is the idea that food companies can trace exactly which of their ingredients went into each of their products. Of course, they already know what type of ingredient is going into a specific product, but they may not be exactly sure when that ingredient was received or what lot # is associated with that exact ingredient where it was shipped.

It's confusing, I know. I'll try to explain a little better and also give my ideas on how this can work.

When the major food safety overhaul passed, it contained a provision that food companies must be able to track where all their ingredients came from and where it's going. It sounds simple in theory, but there are complications involved. It's basically how we think about jet packs. As Joe Rogan said in his stand-up act, 'Where's the jet packs, bitch?!' We've heard about jet packs since the 50's and yet it never comes to fruition. We have the technology... so where are they. Traceability has the same sort of dichotomy involved. Small problems and a matter of organization make this simple matter, simply complicated.

Here is the situation: A wheat farmer brings his wheat to market, where it is bought by a mill. This mill takes in the wheat, cleans it, and mills it into flour. The mill then sells this flour to one or many food companies for a variety of applications. The food company may use this shipment of flour on one product, several products, or even several different runs of several different products. To further complicate matters, the wheat may be mixed with other winter or summer varieties from other farms before it's milled, so if there is a problem with the flour, it can come from anywhere. This situation is the same for peppers, cilantro, onions, or whatever.

What each buyer/seller in the supply chain must do is track the place they bought from and the place they sold to. I see the solution involving either rfid tags or upc bar codes. The original source i.e. farmer, prints a code to affix to any paperwork as well as to the shipment. This code or tag, when scanned, stores their farm's establishment number as well as a lot number for that item, as well as a time stamp. The next person in line must scan this bar code/tag then print their own. The tag they print out contains the code from the original source. This tag/code is printed and affixed to every shipment that contains THAT source. Fast forward to a bakery that is baking multiple products that day and multiple products the next day. When they got that ingredient in, they scanned the code/tag and replaced it with their own as everyone else has done in the supply chain. So now their code shows the time location and lot number for that ingredient for EVERY step of the supply chain.

This is where it get's tricky. The bakery is going to run brownies and two types of cookies with the ingredient. For each product they create, they must embed a code/tag with the ingredient's information... which contains every step in that process for every ingredient. This bakery has the codes tied into their inventory system so they can look up and see some sort of a flow chart that shows every step for every ingredient, which can become hundreds of locations/lot numbers. They can also use this to ensure they're using 'first in, first out'.

Traceability has a number of logistical problems. First is how to figure out how a system for the lot numbers. It can't be whatever the farmer/plant manager comes up with because we can't have duplicate codes floating around. So the lot numbers must somehow use part of their establishment number to differentiate. Each entity must have compatible computer systems, but honestly, you can do this with an Excel spreadsheet and a bar code scanner gun.

The feds must be the leaders here or what is simple and a little complicate becomes impossible. They must act on how this framework will exist and they'll need a lot of resources($$) to get it right the first time. Republicans need to realize this and not fly off the handle and defund it because it grows the government. You know what's worse than an overblown government? An inefficient government. This part of the regulatory system can be a huge bonus to the industry, but if we start smoking and drinking while this baby is in the womb, it's going to be born slow and defective. So let the government spend the money and staff the agencies with smart people(I'm available) to piece this together the right way so it can run efficiently.

Cory Booker: A Tale of Two Budgets.

2011-01-04T21:02:00.000-05:00

I meant to blog about either the lame Pepsi - Yale research fellowship non-controversy or David Zinczenko's scientifically bankrupt Yahoo! articles about the worst foods.

But I see a better opportunity to educate here using one of my Twitter followers now public example.

Some econo-wonks already know about Newark Mayor Cory Booker's budget troubles. He's tens of millions of dollars in the red with his city's budget and is forced with making deep cuts.

See, the recession meant that people had less taxable income. Coupled with declining property values and a foreclosure crisis, that means that a large, trying-to-grow city like Newark has much less revenue to work with. Imagine you get paid hourly and you get your hours cut. You had planned to use your next check to pay rent, utilities, and groceries, but your check is about 2/3 of what you expected it to be under normal circumstances. What do you pay... or more importantly, what don't you pay? That's what Cory Booker faces.

At the same time, Cory has come to terms with another out of control budget. Cory used to play football, and according to his Facebook post, played at 265lbs. Football players play very hard and lift weights, so they can normally eat what folks on the farm would call a free ration diet. Muscle mass acts as a food furnace, craving calories to keep up the bulk. Many football players have trouble later in life with finding a compromise between the level of activity(weight training and cardio) and caloric intake. He says that he got down to 230lbs(where he says he wants to be), but ballooned back up to 295 while dealing with his other budget.

Cory Booker is a bold and brave person to post this info online to a cruel and unforgiving internet. He stands at a vulnerable point in his weight loss, because he will hear advice from many people. But that's the problem with that internet, isn't it? It's something I call being Google Educated. All the knowledge in the world and all the experts in the world are at our fingertips... but so are the crazies. You can learn about dna or how pasteurization works, but you can also learn about various JFK conspiracy theories or how vaccines are bad for kids.

So I'm writing this for 3 purposes: 1. to write another post, which I haven't done in a while 2. to give tips to Cory in one place rather than annoying him through my Twitter account @samvance and 3. to dispel some myths and misinformation before America's Mayor gets corrupted by them.

It's not what you eat so much as how much you eat i.e. your caloric budget.

Many people who mean well in the obesity fight tend to demonize certain foods. They say crazy, unscientific things like 'Don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognize.' or 'stay away from processed foods and preservatives'. It's the calories, stupid... For example, a Kansas State University nutrition professor lost 27 pounds in 2 months eating mostly snack cakes. How did he do it? Calories.

Cory weighs 287 right now according to today's facebook posting. That means, Cory needs to consume about 3,444 calories with no extra calorie burning activities to maintain that weight. Since Cory is a male, he takes his current weight and multiplies it by 12(women should multiply by 11) to get a very basic idea of caloric consumption. If Cory is active, like running or shoveling snow for people, then he would need even more calories to maintain that weight.

Cory can use this knowledge to his advantage, however. While similar in structure to a monetary budget, the mathematics of a caloric budget are the opposite. More isn't better in this case. So what can Cory do right now? Two things; monitor and set a goal. Luckily, Cory has started the process by selecting a target weight - 230 lbs.

Using the calorie math, we can do a little algebra to determine about how much he needs to get reach his goal.

His current weight is represented as follows: 287 * 12 = 3,444

For his goal weight, we use the following: X = 230 * 12 X = 2,760

So if Cory limits his caloric intake to 2,760 calories a day and leads an otherwise sedentary lifestyle, he will eventually get down to 230 lbs. That's a difference of 684 calories a day. A pound of fat = 3,500 calories, so theoretically, every 3,500 calories he shorts himself will result in another pound lost. This will take approximately 5.11 days to lose 1 pound and 291 days to lose the 57 pounds it will take to get to his goal weight with just a sedentary lifestyle.

But we all know from his Twitter feed that he isn't a sedentary person. This is where the monitoring come's in. For one or two weeks before beginning this process, I suggest Cory keep a food diary. I have one on an Excel spreadsheet I can send to him that I got from Dr. Mike Mangino, who taught FST 201: The Science of Food at Ohio State. The chart should include the portion, nutrients, and caloric content of everything he eats as well as the length of time or distance for any physical activities. All of these things show how much he energy he really expands. This is important because he may eat way more than 3400 calories given the amount of activity, so his caloric goals must account for that. Meaning that 2,760 would be the minimum amount of calories he needs to be at 230. If he burns an additional 500 or 700 calories a day through walking the neighborhoods, running, and yes, even sitting in meetings, then those calories must be added back in.

This is important so you avoid what I call the Race To Zero, where people try to eat as little as possible instead of the appropriate amount. This is one reason I object to David Zinczenko's crappy Yahoo! articles about the Worst Foods in America.

Avoid processed foods? What does that even mean? All foods undergo some level of processing. Ignore it, Cory. Your concern is calories, protein, carbs, and things like potassium.

Avoid HFCS? No. Pop is a hindrance because it represents empty calories. Sugar is sugar, so it doesn't matter if it's cane, HFCS, raw, or pureed guava. You can have soda and still lose weight, but cutting pop for at least a while is something very easy to trim from your bloated caloric budget. Drink 1% or skim milk(casein is an efficient protein), orange juice(Vit C, Potassium), or unsweetened iced tea(0 calories).

My tips:

Carb up in the beginning of the day and work in proteins a little at lunch and the rest for dinner. Cream of Wheat or oatmeal, orange juice, and fruit start you off with energy and don't slow you down.

Snack time! If you need a snack or two throughout the day, don't forget to count those calories, and try things like dried fruit, almonds, beef jerky, or a yogurt. Bananas are good too.

Lunch - Some proteins but still mostly carbs. Tuna or chicken salad sandwich. Salad. Unsalted fries.

Dinner - Good time for protein. Great low-fat options are chicken breast, fish, and turkey. Lean beef and pork cuts are good, too.

Not one of the first things people think of at the end of the day, but an omelet gives you all the amino acids your body needs to synthesize new proteins while you sleep and are a great way to add in other things that are rich in nutrients.

Potatoes! Yes, Cory, potatoes are fine. A great option for lunch and dinner, potatoes are sodium/fat free and high in fiber and potassium. Potassium is very important in regulating cell fluids and blood pressure. The average potato is only 110 so you can eat a lot and feel full.

Don't skip meals. This creates that crazy strong hunger that causes you to overdo it on the next meal.

Don't deny, manage. It's a simpleton's route to banish foods that you like as if you're some foodaholic. And you're not the Mayor Of Simpleton, are you? Have a cookie or a slice of cheesecake in moderation, just remember that those calories count.

Don't panic if you go over! If you blow your planned caloric budget for one day, then account for the overage for the rest of the week by shorting the calories a little more.

I hope this helps and doesn't come off as more unneeded, unsolicited advice. As for the other budget, consult an economist.

Depouillage

2010-12-23T00:53:00.000-05:00

Let's get this party started right. Let's get this party started quickly... right?

I've had two food culture articles occupying tabs in my Firefox browser for a month now. The first article appears in Newsweek and is written by Lisa Miller. The other is an article in the Washington Post by Brent Cunningham & Jane Black.

Both articles assume things which are untrue and symptomatic of most American's ignorance about food. Both articles make it seem that the best food you can get is at Whole Foods or a farmer's market and if you aren't lucky enough to afford that, you're stuck with high calorie, processed crap. First off... everything is processed. I know this is semantics, but the people who say this know nothing about how food is handled, so I know there is little room for nuance in their argument. They really think some food comes out of a machine, but their Whole Foods foods come from some sort of virgin food birth. It's Jesus after he's been individually quick frozen and packaged in environmentally responsible packaging... you know... like the pilgrims would do.

So they assume that A. everything else is processed and B. processed = bad. They also assume that their foods are completely balanced and beyond reproach and everyone else's food is packed with calories and chemicals.

Brian Wansink from Cornell has been doing some very intriguing work on what he calls 'Health Halos' that may explain the Foodies ego toward their food and disdain for others. Health Halo refers to the halo effect that is seen in sensory science. For example a taste test on vanilla milkshakes may yield uncharacteristically high scores from someone who is a fan of vanilla. The vanilla fan may give the shake higher marks for mouth feel and creaminess versus a fan of chocolate. The Health Halo is where people grade food assumed to be of a higher quality or stature as healthier or lower in calories. He demonstrates this perfectly in an experiment he performs on Showtime's Penn & Teller: Bullshit!

Premium organic hypermarkets such as Fresh and Whole Foods exploit the ignorance of the liberal arts and Google Educated foodies that believe everything else causes obesity and disease. Their ignorance costs them dearly.

In the Newsweek article, a family is said to spend $1,000 a month on their food. What's more is the parenthetical caveat that states that $1,000 is roughly 20% of their monthly income. Assuming this is post tax, that means this family makes about $80,000/year. This is about 60% higher than the 2008 average income of $52,029. So not only are they getting ripped off(organics are no healthier than conventional), but they get indoctrinated into this misinformation and talk people who are much less fortunate into forking over a much bigger percentage of their take home pay for these groceries. These groceries then rake in the profits. According to the Newsweek article(and because I'm too lazy to look this up myself), Whole Foods reportedly increased their profits by a whopping 58% last quarter.

People buy what they afford and if they live from paycheck to paycheck, watching calories takes a backseat to getting the most food for your dollar. I've yet to make more than $29,000/yr(someone please help me right this wrong and hire me!) and have gone many weeks where I have to stretch my dollars. I don't miss meals, though, and will readily buy dinner before making a credit card payment. When my dollar is stretched the most, I buy ramen noodles, canned tuna, rice/pasta chub packs of 83/27 ground beef, whole pork shoulders, eggs, milk, potatoes, and apples/bananas. Most of these foods are calorically dense. If I go out to eat during an economic crunch, it'll almost always be a buffet and that will be the only thing I eat that day. When I have more money, what do I do? Less buffets, mostly the same types of foods, because I'm a picky eater, but I don't eat like it's the last day on earth. I also buy less groceries more often and will splurge on fancier items(like the Red Pepper Pesto at Giant Eagle).

I don't want to make this an Elite vs. regular Joe thing or a liberal vs. conservative thing, because I know conservatives that also blow their hard earned money on this bullshit. I also don't want to come down on quality, but people must understand that quality has nothing to do with whether or not something is organic and is more a matter of statistical process control and sourcing better ingredients. Of course, then we get into the industrial side and that's a whole other ball of wax.

Crap... I promised I was going to make this shorter. Fuck.

How To Scare Kids And Influence People.

2010-11-07T21:41:00.000-05:00

When arguing about food and food policy in this country, children are often used as pawns. Nobody can stand the thought of anything bad happening to our kids. This is why baby formula and school lunch food are some of the most heavily regulated things in the food industry.

But that is all about scaring the adults who are concerned for the kids. To my knowledge, this is the first instance I've seen of scaring the children directly... and it sickens me.

Watch this video:

He's done this 'experiment' time and time again in his home country. So he's experienced in scaring kids. He then goes on to say that chicken nuggets are not made this way in the United States... just before he tells kids how the chicken nuggets they love are made. Did you catch that? In the intro for the segment, he admits he is lying to little kids.

Now body language is very important when interacting with kids. Be aggressive or frown at the right moment and you make the impression that what you're doing is bad/wrong/disgusting. Look at what he does at about the 1:30 mark where, after explaining that everything else on the chicken was good and has value, he then asks the kids, 'You want to eat some?' as he waves the raw chicken at their faces. Substitute the chicken with liver, asparagus, beans, cottage cheese, or triple cream brie while making those motions and you'll get the same reaction.

A couple things:

To me, this is no different than indoctrinating kids with... religion, racism, hatred, violence...ignorance. He leads them with emotional cues and body language. Amazingly, the kids still said they would eat it.

He took the very poorly deboned carcass(still lots of breast meat left on), cut it up and said it was horrible. Are you telling us, Mr. Oliver, that you never make chicken stock? You don't submerge those 'nasty bits' under a pot of cold water and slowly bring it to a simmer for several hours, reducing the liquid and extracting the flavor? Hmm. Interesting. I only went to Johnson & Wales for a trimester and it's the first thing you learn in stocks and sauces. Also, are we saying that using the meat on the bone is bad and throwing the ugly meat away is good?

Why not teach the kids how to make their own chicken nuggets or chicken fingers? Why not teach them safe knife handling skills? Why not explain what calories are and how our bodies deal with excess calories? Why not do any of that instead of trying to scare children and adults?

It isn't the food, it's the quantity. By dumping a bunch of prepackaged goodies on some fat woman's table and making her cry, are you really more effective than showing her how to use Excel to track and add the nutrients and calories of the food she eats? Is it better than showing her how to shop for ingrediants that are cheap, nutrient dense, and last the week? Is it better than showing her basic recipes, techniques, and tips to help her plan meals she never thought she had time for?

This show seems to be all about scaring kids and influencing people. Jamie Oliver and his producers may mean well, but they go about it in the worst way possible. Exploiting a region of people, a body type, and children is a high ratings, high trauma approach that will either create more misguided activists, or shame those people and make their situations even worse.

Carrot Schtick... Schtick

2010-09-25T05:48:00.000-04:00

I just watched the @maddow 'Carrot Schtick' segment from her 9/23 show and had some thoughts. Before I begin, let me preface by saying that I subscribe to her video podcast version of The Rachel Maddow Show. I think the material presented is fair and factual, and she brings a level headed demeanor to our polarized world.

First of all, let's give the floor back to the experts. Nothing fries my melon quicker than scientifically illiterate people soap-boxing science. We take food education and advice from college journalism professors who never interview food scientists for his books about food (I'm talking about you, Pollan). People who graduated from college with a liberal arts education(I wrote about this before), tend to approach learning about science in the same way they learned about the classics and humanities. What I notice about these people is that they come from an environment where everything is abstract, so everyone can have an opinion on anything. Science isn't at all opinion friendly. I can believe that one giant cheeseburger and cheese fries will give me a heart attack, but it doesn't make it true. Eating this every day for years will give you an increased likelihood of a heart attack, but not the one and not even for several a month. I can say that the plastic bottle I drink water from will make me sterile from the BPA and give me cancer, but that doesn't make it true. The truth is a lot less exciting and sensational than that.

Trans fats are bad for you, but not to the extent it's been made out to be. A lifetime of far above avg consumption may cause problems.

My thoughts on Child nutrition:

1) Health is a relative term. What is healthy for one person may be too much for another and depends on what else that person ate the rest of the day/week/month

2) School lunches require a certain amount of calories and schools can't possibly be expected to be responsible for what the student's parents give them at home.

3) Calories aren't good or bad, only too few or too many are bad. A zero calorie diet is not a better diet than a 2,500 calorie diet. It's death. We need calories, just not too many... but it depends on the situation... again, not very exciting or sensational.

4) Fats are over-consumed, but not inherently bad. Fat is stored energy that also protects our bodies and keeps us warm. We shouldn't demonize a food just because it has a high fat content. We don't know what else the person ate that day or week. Maybe they're at an acceptable level when their whole diet is observed.

Don't conflate what some lobbyist says with what the science is. A Food Hysteric and a lobbyist will both sensationalize food to the same degree, just in opposite directions. Remember; the truth is very boring and 'blah'. I love food science and even I yawn when reading research.

So Glenn Beck talking about people taking fries away is nutty, but it doesn't make fries evil as well. Fries aren't evil, they're fries. Everything has a place with moderation. My food processing professor at OSU was an expert in dairy and had been teaching at the university level since the late 40's. He was in his mid 80's when I was his student. He drove to school, held office hours, and still ate ice cream every day. He wasn't fat or diabetic or any of that. He always said, 'everything in moderation'. To my knowledge, the only thing he had to cut back on was was pecans, because he found it harder to digest in his later years.

Honestly, even the things we agree aren't good in high amounts(fat, mercury in fish), still takes prolonged exposure to very high amounts of anything legal and not good for you to actually make you sick. This of course, is by design, because the amount's allowed per serving of things like BPA is set at a tiny fraction of the minimal amount it takes to cause illness.

For example:

Additive X causes illness @ 2 grams per kilogram of body weight(toxicity).

FDA sets the highest allowable amount @ 20 milligrams per kilogram of body weight.

Food Y contains 100 micrograms of X per serving & 2 servings per can(16 oz ).

Food Y then contains 200 micrograms of X per can.

So you'd need to eat 100 16oz cans of food Y to get ill from Additive X... and X metabolizes in 3 days, so you have that long to eat 100 cans of Food Y.

But that isn't exciting. It 's roughly in the ball park of how toxicity levels work for everything allowed in our food.

I think I got off track here, but let me restate a few things. I like The Rachel Maddow Show and I understand that her larger point for this segment was pointing out that the GOP may be testing the waters for a culture war. I'm just concerned that science will get lumped in with a political party, and because of that, people on the left will only grow more cynical about science and write off everything as 'Big' [fill in the blank].

To have a real science based discussion about anything in our society, especially food, requires people that, quite frankly, know what the hell they're talking about, not journalism Prof's or lobbyists. I would ask anyone affiliated with The Rachel Maddow Show that is reading this to look into utilizing food science experts in the same way you utilize astro-physicists to discuss space. Some great resources for interviews would be colleges with top food science programs, such as: Ohio State, Wisconsin, Cornell, Penn State, and UC Davis. Also make use of IFT(Institute of Food Technologists).

Above all else, we need a renewed interest in science education in this country so well intentioned ppl can spot sound science and recognize the frauds and misleading correlation studies.

[I apologize for the rambling nature of this post. It was late(or early) and I felt like saying some things that weren't all under much of a unifying theme.]

Total Recall: Food Safety Hysteria Gives Rise To Unnecessary Demands.

2010-09-19T20:15:00.000-04:00

People are upset about a food safety bill that is currently stalled in the Senate. The bill mandates regular inspections of food plants, which I also support. But one of the strange things to come out of the recent salmonella outbreak and this bill stalling, is people's continued claim that the FDA is powerless to do any enforcement.

The New York Times ran a story about the bill and mentioned the egg recall, stating the following:

"...the F.D.A. never inspected the Iowa egg facilities at the center of the recalls. Even if it had, the agency would not have had the power to order that their eggs be recalled despite conditions it later found to be filthy."

I find this to be very misleading. First off, the FDA absolutely has the power to order the eggs be recalled. There are two things here. Number one, the FDA can ask the company to institute a recall and as soon as they do, the FDA assists them and provides guidance to ensure the proper steps are being taken. Yes, all recalls are voluntary, but I will challenge anyone reading this to find instances where a food company refused to issue a recall. That brings me to number two and the reason why recall requests are always granted - seizure.

Under 21 U.S.C. 334 the FDA has the authority to seize food it believes to be contaminated or adulterated in some way. Food companies absolutely do not want this to happen... ever. Just on a P.R. level, any company would much rather look like they caught a mistake and are trying to make it right by recalling the adulterated product. This is where the New York Times' story is so misleading. No food company in their right mind, or with credible evidence that proves they are being unfairly treated, would ever risk an FDA seizure. Under a recall, the FDA helps. Under a seizure, the FDA takes over, in some instances keeping you from running production by clotting your supply lines and warehouse storage. A seizure is like a crazy cat lady having her cats taken away because they're emaciated/diseased/abused... it's an indictment on the party involved. Some companies didn't survive massive recalls because of the negative impact it had on their sales. Under a seizure, you give up all ability to say you are trying to make thing's right. This is why the New York Times article is so intellectually dishonest.

The power to demand a recall is unnecessary and in my opinion, does more harm than good. Even to good facilities, bad things can happen. A worker can fail to notify their supervisor they are ill and work their shift, contaminating food. Temperature anomalies can occur in between regular temperature checks, preventing some of the product from reaching a proper kill temp for bacteria. A packaging employee may grab a spindle of identical looking labels that don't have the allergen statement. The voluntary recall gives the company a chance to own the problem and make it right. Believe it or not, most people do give a damn about their jobs and the safety of their products. A seizure is a last resort action meant to stop a rogue company from harming the public. By harming a business that just made a careless mistake, you potentially put thousands of people out of work.

What I want to see happen...

The FDA has roughly 51,229 facilities to inspect but inspected fewer than 1,000 in 2008. This is a big problem and this is the reason:

We simply need more Consumer Safety Officers, the boots on the ground that actually go to these facilities and carry out the inspections. Specialists are the people that are technical writers, researchers, and food microbiologists that process samples.

We need to have close to 5,000 inspectors, but until recently, the FDA had been underfunded. This is the biggest problem. The next big problem that must be tackled is the hiring process.

On USAJobs.com there are no entry level Consumer Safety Officer positions to apply for. None. There are only GS-7 Through GS-13, which are PhD's and upper management positions, on up to director level. The USDA's Food Safety & Inspection Service, which inspects meat facilities, does have a GS-5 entry level Food Inspector position open, but this leads me to the next part of the problem. The process for getting hired involves filling out a lengthy application and meeting certain educational requirements, which is understandable for a government position. They also take at least 6 - 8 weeks after the posted job's closing date to get back to the candidates that applied. This position's closing date? 01/31/2011 You won't even know if you made it to the first round of phone interviews nearly 6 months. What food safety/food science talent(myself, for example) can afford to wait that long just to start the interview process?

So we need more people and the speed at which we hire those people needs to increase exponentially. Notice that my solutions didn't involve any new laws other than requiring timely inspections. It isn't the laws that are flawed, it's the execution.

The truth is, instances of food borne illnesses have been decreasing since the end of the last century. That doesn't mean we can't do way better, but it does mean there is a fair amount of hysteria out there. Hopefully, someone with the USDA and FDA addresses these human resource issues. If so, I'll be the first to apply.

Foodism.

2010-09-04T22:16:00.000-04:00

I've had a few notable quotables in my day. I know of at least a handful of times where people grabbed a pen and immediately started writing down what I just said. I've also had instances where people say things to me then wait for my reaction. After a couple seconds, they say it again and look sad when I don't recognize what turns out to be a 'Sam Quote'.

Most recently, I came up with the combination of Terrel Owens and Ocho Cinco, which is T.Ocho Cinco. Although, I didn't research that hard to see if that was ever used before. Not bragging, just establishing a history of me classifying things.

My newest creation is a term that explains the ill logic and insanity of some Food Hysterics and Foodies. The term did appear very briefly in New York Magazine a couple years ago, but it was kind of a suggestion...

Edible Brooklyn editor Gabrielle Langholtz suggested that bona fide food fans — those who read food books, travel to food destinations, and taste obsessively — could refer to themselves as “foodists,” as intense Star Trek fans go not by “trekkies” but “trekkers”

The term is defined by other people and it varies from person to person. Some people use it like you would use nutritionist.

I have added my own definition for the term/mindset.

Foodism: A prejudice against a brand or type of food - for reasons other than taste - without rational or credible reasoning to back up your feelings. Essentially, it's the same mindset that racists have.

This is where I ran into a little trouble.

People were telling me that I think foodies are racists and I never said that. I said they have the same mindset. A racist might hate black people, but his reasoning might be based on something that is factually inaccurate or completely illogical. For instance, people used to think that getting blood transfusions from black Americans would alter their soul. There is no science to support this and it's obviously false and irrational.

A foodist (as I define them) will make disparaging remarks about a food and when pressed for a reason, it never bears out anything credible. This works for a type of food, or a specific brand.

I have long said that there is no good or bad foods, just things people eat. It's the totality of everything in our diets that contribute - in part - to our total health. The sodium in a Dorito is no worse than the equivalent sodium in French Onion soup or a risotto. But if you eat the Dorito, someone will make some joke about you having a heart attack. So when pressed on this, the foodist then says it's the preservatives. Preservatives? Which one? ...Crickets...

Look at all the obesity and diabetes and autism... autism!

So the preservatives cause all those things? Each preservative causes all those or all those preservatives have to be combined?

Don't be a dick, you know it's the high fructose corn syrup and the fatty tortilla chip.

So all Doritos are bad or all tortilla chips are bad?

So foodists are not racists, but the soundness and validity(or lack thereof) of their argument mimics the same structure a racist uses. A racist has reasons, but they are quickly discredited and an underlying ignorance about that race is exposed.

Foodism also can involve elements of conspiracy theorists and what I call a belief in magic. The evil CEO is sequestered in his fancy boardroom, plotting against their customers... The best is when a foodist asserts something about food that cannot be explained by science.

What started all this was someone saying that GMO foods cause infertility, then told me to keep eating my Doritos. First off, foodists are so friendly. Second, GMO foods cause infertility? Really? What gene, when altered, causes infertility? No answer. Why? Magic. They hate GMO's so it must be true. What really happens is that some researcher with expertise in an unrelated field does a correlation study. Actually, a good 99% of foodists and food hysterics cite correlation studies as gospel. The least scientific study you can do is a correlation study. Then people add their own anecdotal evidence and confirmation bias and wala... magic.

You know who isn't a foodist? A food scientist. Food scientists know that food is food and if you eat a lot of fat and carbs, you'll carry more fat and be at a risk of having issues, but it isn't the specific food, it's the fat, sodium, et cetera. Some foods are very nutrient dense, which is great if you need a lot of nutrients, and some foods are higher in fat or carbs, which is great if you're an athlete and carry a low body fat percentage and have a high metabolism.

Mozzarella Cheese sticks with marinara = bad, will kill you very fast.
Organic Goat Cheese coated in bread crumbs, sauteed in butter, served on a disc of fresh red sauce = fine.

Huh?!

That, my friends, is foodism.

The truth is that one Big Mac will not kill you. It might cause a health problem if you eat Big Macs every day, for years... and only if the Big Macs put you over your limit on sodium and fat. If you stay at or below your limit of calories/sodium/fat then you could eat Big Macs every day and be fine. Why? It's the totality of the diet, not a food, not a brand, and not a specific corporation's evil CEO that you think is petting a cat and staring at 5 computer monitors... and laughing maniacally.

So quit being such a foodist.

My Response To The NYT Slow Food Article...

2010-08-11T19:06:00.002-04:00

Click on the blog title to see the NYT article I am responding to...

Spam is merely SPiced hAM and consists of shoulder and ham cuts of pork mixed in a salt solution and pressed into shape. Your dogs never ate so good [to the commenter on the NYT article page that said she wouldn't even feed Spam to her dog].

Much of the cynicism about the food industry and food science in particular, stems from scientific illiteracy that plagues our country. This is why many of you believe whatever the Food Hysterics at Whole Foods tell you and it's why you read the books of a journalism professor and take them as fact. Much of the college educated population have Liberal Arts degrees. Nothing wrong with that, but the problem is that you go reading about science, the same way you went about learning the humanities. Science is a little different. Science requires background knowledge, patience, testing, and listening to credible sources. Much of Liberal Arts is intangible; abstract ideas and philosophies... opinions. Science is mostly concrete and in the cases where it is abstract, the basic ideas are testable.

I think this difference in education helps explain why people believe the things they do about food. People don't have the background knowledge of toxicity or they haven't worked with numbers enough to understand the difference between a trace amount of something(BPA for example) and the amounts it really takes of the substance to cause illness. This is also why people believe in homeopathy and shield their kids from receiving vaccinations.

Food today is safer than it has ever been. Foodborne illnesses have been declining steadily every year since the implementation of HACCP principles in the mid 90's. But still, people say that the food industry is poisoning kids. People site discredited studies about food from everyone but food scientists, so you see the modern mythologies of HFCS and Food Dyes take hold.

I have a food science and technology degree and I get people who very 'matter of factly' tell me things that are dead wrong all the time. Hot dogs contain meat/fat/nitrates & nitrites(for color and safety), not lips and asses. Organic food has the exact same nutrients as conventional. All meat and milk has some hormones in it naturally. All meat is antibiotic free so long as farmers follow the proper withdrawal periods. Pesticide residues are very small and would require the consumption of hundreds of pounds of fruit/veggies in a day to get sick from them.

Nobody wants to listen, though.

For whatever reason, the Food Hysterics take comfort in their ignorance and they take comfort believing that all corporations are evil and want them dead. The truth is that corporations benefit greatly from producing safe food and the larger companies have the means to implement safety controls and advanced testing that small operations can't compete with.

But nobody want's to believe that.

Of course, you are all entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts.

Facts: The old days were not any fun for the farmers.

Farmers needed more kids since the work was so labor intensive. It took massive effort to pull weeds on large fields or to constantly move livestock from pasture to pasture and from creek to creek. A return to this type of farming means you need more people per acre working the land.

You also need more land. Yields 100 years ago were much smaller than today, so a return to that agriculture will require 2 to 3 times the land. The late Norman Borlaug figured that converting the world to organic farming would only produce enough food for roughly half of the population. Any volunteers to never eat again?

Educate yourself. Find a food scientist. Ohio State, Michigan, Cornell, UC Davis, and Wisconsin all have top notch food science departments. Talk to the faculty, email them. Pay attention to the sources of information. Even doctors are unqualified to discuss matters of food science... as are environmental scientists. Get your information from peer reviewed journals and pay attention to things like sample sizes. Email a food scientist when you don't understand something instead of becoming cynical or inventing conspiracy theories.

And if all else fails, you can ask me. I'm on Twitter @samvance and I have a blog edibleintelligence.blogspot.com

Thanks for reading.

Many Works of Fiction and Hysteria...

2010-08-03T21:10:00.000-04:00

Hello blog world, haters, and curious eavesdroppers. It's been a while since I posted, so I thought I would toss together a tolerable hodgepodge of food things...

Cloned meat has reportedly been found in the UK... cue the music... dun dun duuuuunnnn! Oh no! Run everybody, ruuuun! Cloned cows! Holy cow! Panic! Freak out!

Don't worry... don't panic... and don't freak out. There is no science that I am aware of that supports any theories about meat coming from cloned animals being anything less than safe. Seriously, it's cool. It's just more panic from the Food Hysterics that I think stems from a lack of fundamental science knowledge.

Remember these simple rules when wading through these stories:

1. Just because someone puts it in a book, doesn't make it true.

2. Established science, and a consensus of credible, peer reviewed scientific studies can never be undone by one study. Never.

3. Always pay close attention to the Expert's area of expertise before you consider what they're talking about. Don't take medical advice from a food scientist, don't take environmental science info from a doctor, and certainly don't give much credence to what an environmental scientist says about food.

4. Chef's have almost zero food science knowledge. Same goes for journalism professors.

5. Beware of percentages in the absence of hard numbers. Percentages often sound worse than they really are. i.e. Grass fed cows have 60% more omega-3 fatty acids than grain fed cows.... but the grain fed has 1.2 and the grass fed has 1.92. When you see actual data, the percentages get less scary.

Hooter's update...

For those unaware of my writings about Hooter's, please read this as well as this.

I met someone that was going to train to be a Hooter's manager several months back. I caught up with him recently and asked how it was going. He quit the training and made several complaints about the company and told one interesting anecdote. He says he went to get some raw wings to bread and fry from the cooler and noticed some had a greenish tint and smelled foul. As any good kitchen worker does, he immediately alerted the manager in charge. The manager took a look and advised him to go ahead and cook them. For those concerned for their health, the training location was North of Columbus in the Polaris area and the store is located on Sancus Blvd. I advise nobody to eat there. Hooter's never got in touch with me and their training continues to be ignorant of the most basic food safety logic. If anyone from Hooter's is reading this... I can help you. You need to seek help from someone before your food kills someone, especially since more families and children are eating there.

School lunch...

I'm all for nutritious school lunches, but aside from the money needed to increases the free lunche program, it shouldn't cost more per person. The school lunch bill being considered now is confusing. It aims to simultaneously reduce childhood hunger while fighting childhood obesity. The bill includes an increase in the number of kids eligible for free lunches, and also includes stricter controls on fat and sodium.

Here is what Mrs. Obama has not considered... the other 18 hrs that the kid isn't in school. They assume that kids blow their diets at school, which I'm not so sure of. Kids get 1 meal at school in most cases, and while they may go for higher sugar, higher fat foods, are they eating more calories than they do at home? Also, the law states that they must get a full 1/3 of the minimum daily calories from the school lunch... shouldn't calories be cut to reduce obesity? I've heard they have provisions aimed at encouraging schools to go local and organic, so they'd be paying a premium for the same food without any health benefits.

Who does this benefit other than organic farmers? Here's a plan: offer a tax break to families that brown bag it. That way, the parents have only themselves to blame for fat kids. Secondly, simplify the menu with lunch meats, and fruits/veggies. Less to cook means lowered energy costs and these foods are already lower in fat/calories. You don't need to increase the spending on this, aside from what you spend to increase free lunches. This seems to be another bill based on more emotion/opinion than logic, reason, and science.

Bad Arnold & The School Lunch Examiner.

2010-07-01T14:09:00.000-04:00

First blog of July and I have several mini-topics to go over. I think this might be a better format, as the longer blogs I'm known for might be off-putting to people wanting some quick serve information. It's ironic, because I was taught to be succinct in my writing and I'm a staunch opponent of length requirements in writing assignments.

First thing... Examiner.

I applied to write posts for the Examiner so I could at least make a little of what Adam Carolla calls WAM(walking around money). Blogger has ad programs, but I've earned a whopping $6 in a year. So I applied and submitted a writing sample, which I had to edit extensively because they didn't like anything written in first person. It's such an old school, pre-blogging, pre-op-ed style. It's like being asked to use a typewriter. I submitted, I waited, I got fucking rejected. Not bitter...nope, not at all. How could I possibly compete with the award winning writing of the Examiner Food writers discussing the most ironic, bitter micro-brews, or some crazy lady talking about how Mountain Dew is destroying America...

IFT 2010 in Chicago has begun. Have fun and mingle lots my friends. For those that don't know, IFT is the Institute of Food Technologists, which is a professional organization for food science and food industry pro's. IFT is a great resource if you have questions about food science and you can find them on Twitter @IFT

I need a career, folks. I keep trying and I keep getting denied. I have talents that are going to waste. I can write, speak, present, sell, collaborate, investigate, or manage things for your organization. I am very relocatable and willing to travel 100% for my job. I'll work trade shows and live out of a suitcase if that is what you need. If you are in need of a good addition for your team, please contact me on Twitter @samvance

The House Committee on Education and Labor is holding hearings about the School Lunch Program today. They want an $8 Billion budget for school lunches. I'm not sure if this is the proposed budget or an addition to the budget, especially frustrating since I was just searching for the info on the committee website.

They seem to be having 2 hearings today. One hearing is about how this bill(H.R. 5504) will help tackle childhood obesity and the other is about how we it will help end child hunger... What? A couple things about this: The bill doesn't directly address obesity. The bill makes it easier to use local farms and I think it updates the nutrition requirements based on professional recommendations. By law, the school lunch program must provide no less than 30% of the nutrition and caloric value that a child needs in a day. This is assuming the kid eats 3 meals a day.

The way to battle obesity is to reduce calories, not increase the nutritional density of a food. This bill can do little to that end because the kid eats whatever when he/she gets home from school. Also, you can't force the kids to eat the food you make. So what is the increase in spending? I know some of the spending is a 6 cent increase in the school lunch reimbursement rate, but that doesn't account for all of it. More of the money comes from increasing the number of kids that qualify for free and reduced lunches, but again, that doesn't account for all the money. The rest is in buying more expensive food.

This is directly related to the local farm provisions. You see, 'local' farms charge a premium for the food and take advantage of your fear and anxiety over processed foods and corporations. This creates a sort of halo effect for these operations, where consumers falsely conclude that local food is more nutritive and safer. It isn't. In fact, Dole and Del Monte have greater resources for ensuring that fruits and vegetables are safe. Small operations can't afford these resources and don't intend to invest in them. The whole reason they market themselves as local is so they can charge a premium on that food. A large operation has to invest to protect itself against recalls and lawsuits. Also, these operations are usually highly automated, meaning there are less people touching and contaminating the product.

I really think this just comes down to foodies and food hysterics being anti-corporate, anti-science, and pro-presentation. They really don't like the way school food looks, which isn't the point of it. I could make these foodies a school lunch that was more fattening and has more calories and they would choose it over the current school lunch. Actually, Cornell has done research where they take fast food and reconfigure it to look like fine dining and participants had substantially higher opinions about that food and how many calories they thought it had versus the exact same fast food they just sampled. This bill has a couple good things in it, but for the most part it's style over substance.

Arnold Foods makes a wide assortment of higher end breads. They usually enjoy shelf placement right alongside Sara Lee and Pepperidge Farm. I was shopping at the Bigg's Hypermarket in Hyde Park (Cincinnati) and noticed and unusual quality defect in a package of their sesame seed sandwich buns.

Can you tell which package doesn't look right?

The package on the left is barely done and has no color. I am amazed that nobody working on the line or in QA for Arnold caught this. The bottom of the package is soggy and a little doughy. The process for these buns is pretty straight forward. Dough is batched and loaded into a hopper where it is portioned, shaped, and sent through a proofing room. Then the dough heads through an oven on a belt. Most likely, the belt speed, oven temp was adjusted and a few of the buns were in the oven when the belt speed was too fast or the oven temp was too low. This should have been picked up by QA though.

Bad Buns.

Good Buns.

FYI - I did take the bad buns to Bigg's customer service counter and explain what the issue was and told her the grocery manager could probably get a credit for them.

Food Hysterics Are Taking Over.

2010-06-24T12:46:00.000-04:00

It's been a long time coming, but we are now starting to see the food hysterics taking over. It isn't just them though, but a larger movement that will never think we are safe enough or healthy enough. You've heard stories of schools banning dodgeball and tag. You've heard about the participation ribbons(losing is too negative).

This overreaction to life has fed the Food Hysterics and created a sense(to them) that they are justified in what they are doing.

So what are they doing?

The CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest) is launching a lawsuit against McDonalds. Apparently, CSPI told McDonalds not to put toys in Happy Meals. McDonalds probably realized that CSPI has no authority over them and ignored the order. So now they're being sued for what CSPI claims are deceptive practices. By putting toys in Happy Meals, it entices kids to drive to McDonalds, open their wallets, and fork over their hard earned money for... what a minute, that doesn't sound right.

Washington D.C. schools will now stop offering flavored milk to students. There choices are now 1% & skim.

Seriously.

Let's look at the Happy Meals first:

Obviously, kids aren't buying the Happy Meals, the parents/guardians are. The toy is as much for the parent as it is for the kid, since the kid stays put and is placated by the toy and not running a muck in the restaurant. Sure, the kids can bug the folks to get them a Happy Meal, but even then, they can still ask them to omit the toy. But it isn't the toy that the CSPI is really opposed to, is it? Clearly, they are opposed to the food, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense either.

Look at the actual ads for Happy Meals:

Happy Meals used to be 4 McNuggets or a Cheeseburger, fries, and a soft drink. Now they have the option of replacing fries with apple slices and replacing the pop with milk. So you can get McNuggets, apple slices, and a milk. That's a pretty good lunch and the kid can be treated to some hot fries every now and then or just have a few of mom or dad's. I have a niece and a nephew almost 2 and just over 4 years old. I have never seen them finish what's on their plate, not even close. They eat like birds and I guarantee that they don't eat more than 200 calories out of their 430 calorie Happy Meal. By the way, if you adults want to go on a diet without giving up your favorite foods, I have a suggestion for you... Happy Meal! You could have a happy meal for 3 meals and still be at a caloric deficit. They even give you a toy(while supplies last).

CSPI is being really short sighted here. Sure they missed the fact that adults are in charge, and they missed the fact that Happy Meals are advertised with apple slices and milk now, and they missed the fact that many kids probably don't even finish the Happy Meal, and they missed the fact that for every fat kid eating a Happy Meal, there are many other kids who are just fine. Despite all that, they missed a way these Happy Meals can be used in their favor. What if the toy was a ball? What about a jump rope? How about one of those mind boggling logic puzzles? Not only that but what about using toys to establish a lifetime of eating apples and drinking milk? Sure they can still get the cheeseburger and fries if the parent allows it, but they should still have that choice, right? Right??

CSPI is wrong about this. The Food Hysterics are wrong about their issues. On nearly every issue, they get the science wrong, or quote studies that have been discredited, or have too small a sample size, or only make a correlation(which you should know means nothing), or haven't been replicated or peer reviewed. If you you tell the truth, that it all boils down to managing calories, then their life's work goes away. They're not activists, they're Hysterics. They take a trace amount of a food additive that would require you to eat 100's of pounds of that food a day to get ill and turn it into a huge danger to society. They need these wild accusations to prey on the weak minded and the science illiterate so that The Food Hysteric's way of life can continue.

They really need to settle down. Maybe they need a Happy Meal. You know, they do come with a toy...

Just Say Yes: An Open Letter To The Food Industry.

2010-06-21T13:01:00.000-04:00

I remember the first job I tried to get. A guy in my class was working at a Ponderosa Steakhouse as a dishwasher and was let go. I overheard him telling someone about his firing so I knew I had a chance to capitalize.

I went down to the Ponderosa and filled out an application. I was thrilled when they wanted to interview me. 'I've got this one', I thought to myself as I waited for the General Manager to join me in the booth. I knew they needed a night time dishwasher and I had spent the last 6 years at family farm boot camp where I had to haul in firewood by the wagon full, shovel hog manure, and wrestle hogs down that needed castrated or moved to other pens. Dish washing would be a cakewalk.

The manager interviewed me and towards the end posed some odd question where he asked me to interpret a quote. It was a psychological test where the quote could be read in a number of different ways. He told me there was no wrong answer. I didn't get the job... as a dishwasher that they needed. Maybe there was a wrong answer after all.

It's been many years since then, and I have gone from wanting to be the Chef-owner of my own restaurant to being interested in the food industry, to wanting a career in the industry. I put myself in debt and went to college. At one point, I had to take a couple years off because I had no money. Once I was able to get financial aid I decided I would make sure I didn't leave without my degree. It wasn't easy.

For many quarters I would start off on a full-time schedule, then drop a class just so I could have money to live off of. It was also very routine for me to return books I had bought as I had run out of money. Most of my college education was gleaned off of what was said in lecture and recitation, because I didn't have books. I had some academic set-backs as well. I struggled in a few classes where I had to take them over, which destroyed my GPA, although none of those classes(except accounting) dealt with my degree.

With one quarter left and the end in sight, I was informed that I had maxed out my financial aid and I would only get a small amount of grant money for my last quarter of school. I was several thousand dollars short and had to get my sister to co-sign a private loan just so I could finish.

That last year I tried to get hired by several food companies ahead of time so I could start work right after graduating. These companies would skim off the people with the highest GPA and most extra-curricular activities, which left me out. Everything is computerized now, so instead of pleading with someone in HR to consider the grades I got in food science and ops management classes, a computer just automatically rejected me.

My sister pleaded with me to manage my expectations and take any job, anywhere just to start making money. My argument was that it'd do more damage to work heavy hours in a job that is going to take my energy away from finding work that I really wanted to do.

So I've had a couple decent things here and there, but no real start to a food industry career. The food industry was sold to me as a vacuum for graduates, that there are more jobs than food science & technology grads to fill them. I was filled with thoughts of bidding wars over my valuable services. I'm still trying to get my career going. My aspirations don't seem very far-fetched to me. I want to get hired into the food industry, preferably into a training program where I am able to learn about the company and move up. I don't expect to be a regional sales manager or a plant manager straight away, but I also know that my skills aren't going to be put to good use as an hourly machine operator, either.

The food industry seems to be taking advantage of the recession. In my 2 and a half years of looking, I've seen the job requirements change. I recently saw a posting for a 3rd shift production supervisor in Eastern Ohio. The ad stated that they wanted someone with at least 5-7 years of experience in a very specific manufacturing process. Starting pay, $30,000 - $35,000. Greedy. First off, how many qualified candidates do you expect to find on the eastern border of Ohio... with 5-7 years of experience in a specific manufacturing process? Second, what self respecting production supervisor with 5-7 years of experience is going to take a 3rd shift job for that little money.

Of course, this is anecdotal, but it underscores a troubling trend for the food industry. This is an industry built on progress and innovation. Food companies should have a minimum number of people that they train for management, R&D, and QA every year. Sure, the smaller companies can't afford these training programs, but they get people a few years after those programs and other people that were in those companies. This is how the talent cross-pollinates within the industry. The trainee moves up after the seasoned manager moves on to the smaller company for a promotion in title and a raise in pay. This is the circle of life in the food industry, or at least it was. There is now something jamming up the gears of progress. I have the solution though, if you want to hear it.

Just say yes.

Don't let the computer or the HR generalist making $25,000/yr hand out all those free 'no's. The no's have a cost associated with them which lies in wasted talent. In their place are people that are very good at being students. Not to sound completely cynical, there are many very good candidates with 3.0 and above GPA's, but there are also many very good candidates with lower GPA's. The inherent flaw is in selecting pristine candidates for an industry that isn't very pristine. What happens when people that locked themselves in their rooms to memorize facts and figures to maintain there GPA encounter adversity and failure in the workplace? How will they handle change and uncertainty?

I'm a fighter, a cellar climber. Nothing I got came easy and I don't have any successes without several failures to go along with it. I learn from my mistakes and I've learned a lot, but I get passed up a lot, too. How many more are out there just like me, who are smart, capable, creative, and know they can do a great job if given the opportunity. My confidence is strengthened through the failures in my life. Every time I couldn't, I learned why, so next time I could.

What is a company to do? Talk to us. Meet us. Shake our hand and have a conversation. If after that, you don't feel we're right for a position, then tell us why and we'll learn from it and be smarter for the next interview. You don't like cookie cutter resumes? Well we hate cookie cutter rejections. Man up, and say why we aren't good enough. It could be a simple misunderstanding that makes us a stronger candidate in your eyes. It could be something we were unaware of and you would have just helped us tremendously.

About me: I have a Bachelor's of Science from The Ohio State University in Food Business Management. That's Operations Management with a heavy emphasis on Food Science. I have several years of management experience in the restaurant industry, just under a year of experience in sales, and less than 6 months experience in Quality Assurance. I retain technical information well and have no trouble with both written and spoken communication. You need an idea, I've got plenty. You need someone to travel, I'm there. You need a problem solved, I'm your man. My main interests are Sales & Marketing, R & D, and Operations Management. My goal is to one day be in a position of leadership over a large food company.

The Media Is like High School For Science...

2010-05-18T20:26:00.000-04:00

Ever have a rumor stat about you when you were in high school?

Infuriating, isn't it?

Sometimes it's a half truth, and sometimes it's just something taken out of context. Either way, the efficiency of the rumor spreading is way higher than the efficiency of you explaining the whole story or putting what was actually said into context. You converted one or two people, but everyone else you confronted just laughed in your face, called you a liar, and repeated the rumor to more people.

Many things in life are counter-intuitive. We anticipate one thing but the other thing is true. Less is sometimes more. You really do, on average, hit the golf ball farther and straighter when you don't try to swing so hard, and so on. These same types of things exist in food science. Although, it's not that they're counter-intuitive, it's that the public has a bad intuition.

Let's look at BPA, for example. Does everyone remember the statement put out by the FDA in regards to BPA in January? What did it say? Some remember it as an admission that the government was wrong about BPA and that we need to take a careful look at how it's regulated. This is one of those rumors that start by something being taken out of context. What the FDA said was that BPA was safe, but there haven't been studies on very subtle effects and that effects on the very young warranted further study. But in several stories that came out since then, it was reported as if the government changed their mind on all the established science.

This is also a great example of how efficient rumors are vs. explaining the whole story. For those who've really looked into BPA, you'll know that BPA(like most chemicals including some vitamins) have a level at which they cause harm. So it has the potential to do harm, and the article(rumor) reports that it's in everyone's bodies, so it must be harming our bodies, right? Hold on. This is the type of rumor where you need to explain, and most people don't sit still for it, but let me have a crack at it. BPA is established as a GRAS food additive. It's not mixed directly in food, but rather it makes up part of the packaging that the food touches, so it must be labeled as an additive. Anything GRAS has a limit on how it can be used and at what quantities. That's per the Code of Federal Regulations. That limit is based on the Lowest Observable Effect Level determined in lab tests. Just to be sure it's safe enough to use, they take the quantity that is determined to cause the LOEL and divide it by as much as 1,000. Now, the studies on BPA all say that it can't be proven that BPA is a definitive danger. Furthermore, some studies show us how much BPA was found in a particular canned product. I've mentioned this before but one of the highest BPA concentrations was found in canned fruit. Here's the part you never get to read. At those levels, a person would have to eat several hundred pounds of the fruit every day to reach the LOEL. But the published rumor is titled, 'BPA in Cans Poses Health Threat, Report Claims'.

This has been going on for a while with different things. I remember a similar story about Tab years ago and they figured you'd need to drink hundreds of cans a day to get ill from whatever the chemical was.

Salt is one of the relatively new bad guys. The way you hear it told, the food industry is poisoning us with dangerous levels of sodium and they say it causes 100,000 deaths a year. Wow, that's a lot of people. The trouble is that BPA supposedly causes a lot of death's too, as does HFCS, as does trans-fat, but where do the numbers come from?

Correlation.

Correlation got you into fights in high school. Correlation caused your parents to punish you when you did nothing wrong. Correlation is basically this: A is true and B contains A and B contains C, so C is true. Put another way... From statistics-help-online.com:

"Let's take some other ludicrous examples to explain the problem of correlation vs. causation. Define as the temperature of a day in Manhattan, and as the number of ice cream vendors out on that day. The correlation coefficient between these two is almost certainly quite positive. (How many vendors are out there in January?). Does this prove that ice cream vendors cause it to be hot? Obviously causation goes the other way. Common sense tells you that. Unless of course you believe in conspiracy theories."

So all the salt people's numbers are based on correlation studies. Is salt killing us? A clue can be found by observing other countries. This is helpful in the HFCS argument since sugar is cheaper than HFCS outside of the US and we can compare with obesity and diabetic rates to see how much healthier they are(in the case of HFCS, non HFCS countries don't fare better).

NYT article by John Tierney:

"When all the surveys in Britain are considered, there has been no consistent downward trend in salt consumption in recent years, said Dr. McCarron, who has been a longtime critic of the salt reformers. (For more on him and his foes, go to nytimes.com/tierneylab.) He said that the most notable feature of the data is how little variation there has been in salt consumption in Britain — and just about everywhere else, too.

Dr. McCarron and his colleagues analyzed surveys from 33 countries around the world and reported that, despite wide differences in diet and culture, people generally consumed about the same amount of salt. There were a few exceptions, like tribes isolated in the Amazon and Africa, but the vast majority of people ate more salt than recommended in the current American dietary guidelines."

So if we all eat about the same amount of salt but we have varying amounts of high blood pressure and heart trouble, then what does that say about salt causing problems.

A couple rules of thumb for reading news releases about studies:

Scientists don't generally brag, so take note of the ones that do and what their intentions may be.

Regardless of your opinion of the matter, judge a study on it's science and methodology, not it's source of funding.

Look for numbers and look for them in context. Beware of studies were they are vague aboiut the numbers or use them out of context, as in percentages.

Read the whole study if possible. Sometimes a researcher or writer of the article will say the opposite of what the study actually proves.

Beware of Meta-analysis. These are studies of studies and they're never as good as well designed original studies.

Learn statistics. This will make you smarter and less likely to be taken advantage of by con men or people with an agenda.

One study proves nothing! Reproducibility is king. A good study can be duplicated and if it's true, the results will be reproduced.

Correlations are a starting point in a scientific quandary, not the end. You need causation, not correlation studies and a lot of percentages to be validated.

Getting Fresh with Foodies...

2010-05-17T22:51:00.000-04:00

Kroger Fresh Fare Closing.

The Kroger Fresh Fare concept that existed at the fancy Kenwood Towne Center will be closing at the end of the month according to an article in the Cincinnati Business Courier which I have linked to in the title of this blog.

It's either closing due to lower sales or trouble with the newly built property, depending on who you ask. If you ask me, it's a bad strategic move either way.

First let's assume they aren't meeting sales numbers. OK, but did they adjust their expectations when the economy nose dived? Are they using unrealistic goals as an excuse to up and leave? The more likely reason could be that they don't want to be in the middle of any entanglements that arise from Bank of America foreclosing on the property... and sales are probably down as well.

This is bad for several reasons. First, this is Kroger's front door step. Closing a unique concept in the home of your headquarters is like Louisville KFC's closing down or Wendy's closing their Dublin, OH locations. Even though they have a few other Fresh Fare concepts in the country, it's still a proof of concept for the company. What message do you send to shoppers about that concept and about the strength of your brand if you yank one of 2 or 3 in the country from your own front doorstep?

Even if it loses them some money, it's worth keeping the concept alive and can serve as a great test market for all things upscale. The development on the site of the Kenwood Towne Center isn't going to crumble into dust. The businesses will rebound and whoever is still there will reap the rewards. Also, Kroger now has a ton of Marketplace locations and they could easily close one of those instead or one of their regular Kroger stores. The closing of that store will be ironic because it will cause the other Kroger stores in the area to be much busier. This will be great for those store's numbers but will annoy the shoppers that get sick of waiting in long checkout lines. Some of these shoppers will instead seek out unique experiences like those found at Whole Foods, Fresh, and Kroger Fresh Fare... if it were still open.

Foodies or Food Snobs: Time for a stern talking to...
Like many of you, I get excited about food. I can get lost for hours in a grocery store and not buy anything. In fact, I often get so excited that I can't decide, then walk away empty handed. I love to look for quality ingredients, try new brands, and be a cheer leader for the things I do like.

What I don't like is what I hear and read from some foodies and food blogs. I won't start beef(get it?) with any blogs by being negative, but I will praise a couple blogs I think are good examples.

Fries With That Shake - Run by Jess Ward, the Burger Baroness herself celebrates food and tells you what's good without being too good for certain foods. Maybe it's the fact that she's a fan of burgers, but you never get the feeling you're being lectured, shamed, or talked down to for the food you enjoy. Bravo Jess, and next time you're in Cincinnati, lets go out for burgers. Follow her on Twitter @BurgerBaroness

Get in mah belly! - Run by Liz and I don't know nearly as much about this blog except that it's honest and not what I would call a Shiite Foodie. Maybe that's not fair... how about Fundamentalist Foodie. She likes the food of the masses, seems humble about her food experiences, and like Jess, is really excited to write about food.

What many people do that I don't like is very similar to reviews written in auto magazines. In those magazines, the guy is always disappointed and makes some shitty comment about the test car that makes the reader feel that the whole process was beneath him. They'll write things like, 'Of course, we would have preferred to test the 6-speed manual, but we'll have to make do with this automatic.'

So food snobs love to brag about how unique their dishes or ingredients are and love to dog on anyone else they feel doesn't have exotic enough ingredients. Maybe they only drink IPA's or brag about how much the superdark microbrew costs, or scoff's at the idea of a domestic draft. These people have indoctrinated themselves to the point that they can't eat a simple cheeseburger or make a fried egg sandwich unless it's flax seed bread, brushed with seasoned extra virgin olive oil, toasted on the grill and made with rare eggs that you can only find in a certain farmer's market that's only open during the summer solstice of every leap year for 2 hours.

Stop it. You're missing the point of food(aside from providing nutrition). The point is to have an enjoyable experience and to make something that tastes good that you can share. What it's become is a canvas for food hipsters to put on an air of superiority. Foodies react to food as if that is how they think they should react and not what they really think/feel. It's not about brands or being ironic. Stop being dicks.

p.s.
Re: the Kroger story...

I know Kenwood is not in Cincinnati Proper but it is Cincinnati to everyone else that doesn't dwell in the Cincy Metro Area.

Bottle Caps 2: Electric Booga-Dew.

2010-05-10T23:00:00.000-04:00

Last week, I blogged about a new bottle cap design being used by a Pepsi bottler for Mountain Dew. Yesterday, I was surprised to see yet another design in use. The third design was for an August 2, expiration date while the second design was from a bottle marked July 26.

Notice the difference between the July 26 cap(left) and the August 2 cap(right). The newer cap places the threading closer to the bottom of the cap. Also notice that the plastic ridge from the 2nd design is now more pronounced in the 3rd.

Here is a much clearer pic that starts to give away the most significant difference between the 2nd and 3rd caps.

As I mentioned last week, the 2nd cap(center) was ever so much shorter than the original(left) and probably saved the company money as for as cost of the product and transportation cost. Now look at the difference between the 2nd cap and the 3rd(right). It seems this cap is even shorter and more dramatic in design, especially if you compare it with the original. Is this a supply issue or market testing? The 3rd design looks a lot like the short bottle caps that Coca Cola switched to for their 20 oz bottles. My only complaint is that the caps slip away from the fingers pretty easy when attempting to unscrew and take a drink with one hand while steering my car with the other.

In other pop news...

Coca Cola brought back Mello Yello and gave it a retro themed can. I love the can's design. It's very pleasing without looking too extreme. They kept the formulation the same, as far as I know, and I was surprised to see they didn't switch to cane sugar as Pepsi did for it's Throwback products. Of course, Mello Yello was replaced by Vault, which has the exact(or nearly exact) formulation. I'm glad to see an established brand back on the shelves.

Mountain Dew Bottlers Trying Out New Caps?

2010-05-02T03:31:00.000-04:00

Here, you see a normal screw top cap for a plastic, 20 oz Mtn Dew bottle. Notice the soft plastic lining as well as the many short plastic threads on the inside. This bottle was dated for July 10th, 2010.

Compare that cap with this one. This cap has less threading on the inside and those individual ridges are longer. Pay particular attention to the lack of a lining. The lining acts as a gasket, making sure the product is sealed and maintains pressure. This cap features a ridge that you can see running just inside of the cap. The ridge is angled to be thicker at the bottom(top of the cap). This is fairly ingenious because as the cap is screwed on, the mouth of the bottle squeezes between the ridge and the cap, creating a tight seal. No need for a liner. I can tell that this cap definitely feels different when unscrewing. This bottle had the same sell by date as the other one. So the question is this; is this the new bottle cap design and are we going to see this in the rest of the PepsiCo line-up?

Here are both caps, side by side for comparison.

Political Science vs. Food Science

2010-04-23T23:47:00.000-04:00

Since there are bills being considered relating to food safety regulation, I thought I would take a few minutes to tread the contemptuous waters of political science. I won't talk about the bills themselves, just the basic principles of regulation, where I stand, and where politics gets in the way of good policy.

I have a strange mixture of ideologies. It's not strange to me, but it is to everyone else in this crazy polarized country of ours. Some people's ideologies are formed by fundamental beliefs, some by fact, and some by misinformation. My politics are a combination of facts and fundamental beliefs in how we should treat others. I have a certain level of expertise in food science and food safety, which tends to land me amongst many conservatives and libertarians, but I'm pretty liberal in all other fronts except maybe economic development theory.

This really sucks when talking to people about non-food issues, because as soon as food issues are brought up, I have to switch sides and oppose these otherwise nice/logical people. To liberals I say that you defer to the scientists when it comes to theology(age of the Earth/Creationism), and you defer to the scientists when it comes to Climate Change, but you completely abandon science when it comes to issues regarding food. Why?

Are you all food scientists that know things everyone else does not? No. Are you simply misinformed? Not really, because when I bring up the science behind something or studies indicating that I am correct, you'll reject them outright. You call them biased if food science experts do a study about food, then cite your own biased study from an environmental group. And by the way, would you hire a diesel mechanic or someone from the Army Corps of Engineers to cater a wedding? Would you trust a study on carbon emissions from a food scientist?

For whatever reason, food has become politicized, and I have a theory about this. Liberals seem to be in support of things that are niche markets, and small operations. Many of these movements tend to be on the radical side(meaning extreme, not awesome). Organic supporters want to believe that organic food has better nutritional value. Locavores believe that a cow that was processed nearby somehow tastes better. Raw milkers think that the statistically insignificant loss of some nutrients during pasteurization can cure all the ills of the world.

So this would appear to be a liberal set of beliefs regarding food, but hold on a minute, what happens when a large operation gets into these markets? Now the liberals create a new term, green-washing. Suddenly, everything they were so evangelical about(science be damned) is now insincere, cynical bunk. It's now Walmart and Tyson and Dean Foods trying to trick you.

The Food Hysteric's agenda - whether they realize this or not - is just a cover for being anti-corporate. Some of it may just be a counter-culture thing, but it's mostly a complete lack of faith that large companies can be interested in both profitability as well as safety(I think these corporation's legal/marketing depts would beg to differ with you).

So when legislation is introduced regarding food, it is written with this sort of anti-corporate populism that can end up ignoring science altogether. We propose strong reforms to eliminate BPA even though it is not even remotely dangerous at even the highest detected levels found in products that use it for packaging. One study I mentioned in one of my first posts took the highest amount of detected BPA in a product and figured out the least amount of that product it would take to harm someone. The product was Dole canned fruit and I think they calculated that you would have to consume several hundred pounds per day for a lifetime to get ill. But we have states voting to eliminate BPA because people are scared and it's political suicide to support it.

Local meat processors are freaking out because there is a push to see that the small operations verify the safety of their HACCP programs through microbiological testing - just like large processors do.

It's not science, it's politics. Small operators don't want to give up their profits to ensure their food is safe, but they are all too happy to see Tyson and Koch and Cargill have to pony up. It's a sick sense of satisfaction that Food Hysteric's enjoy when anything punitive is brought down upon a corporation.

Let me also say that I am pro-regulation. Yes, let's hold each other's feet to the fire and make sure we are doing all we can to have a safe food supply, but that means everyone. People have been pushing to mandate that the FDA inspect many more plants than it is. This seems rational until you realize that the FDA is critically understaffed, same with the USDA. So what good is new regulation in this instance, when it doesn't solve the problem of a poorly staffed agency? This is what happens when science and reason are suppressed in favor of politics, populism, misinformation, and hysteria.

Science isn't left or right. In fact, I'd say that most scientifically minded people I encounter are libertarian - not the fake tea-party libertarian, mind you, but the Ron Paul libertarians. Can science win? I sure hope so, or else our society will head for a second dark ages with lower crop yields, everything considered toxic, and nobody aspiring to enrich our lives through science and innovation.

p.s.

It isn't just food, that suffers our science illiteracy. NASA has been grossly underfunded for years. 'Too expensive. A waste.' people say. NASA only takes one half of one percent of the budget, but brings about jobs and creates technology that is used in many other industries.

p.p.s.

The title of this blog post is a clickable link to read a story about BPA by Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. I urge you all to read it. Also, you can find me on Twitter @samvance and look me up on Facebook under the same name.

These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things...

2010-04-11T21:24:00.001-04:00

You know how Oprah has a favorite things week? She talks about stuff she uses and then bribes people with cars and candles and whatnot. I think that's pretty cool, except I have no sponsor and no money for giving things away, but I'd still like to share what food related gadgets and food products that I really do use. If marketing reps for any of these products want to send me stuff, I won't stop you.

The Oster Food Steamer 5716.

Vegetarian? Carnivore? Omnivore? It makes no difference what you're into, you need one of these yesterday. This unit features two stackable steam compartments and a pan. You can use just one compartment if you want. The versatility doesn't end there, one of the steam pans has indents for steaming eggs. I mainly use this for hard steamed eggs, and steamed rice, but you can steam asparagas in the bottom while salmon or shrimp or crab legs steam to perfection in the top. It's also great for steaming hot dogs, brats, and even chorizo. When the digital timer goes off the steamer automatically goes into a warm mode. There is a clear water reservoir and spot to add more water when it gets low without having to take everything apart. Unlock a whole new dimension to your cooking with this product. Seriously, go buy this now.

Hamilton Beach Set n' Forget 6 Quart Slow Cooker.

Another must have. Sturdy. Reliable. Metal. This beats your crock-pot in several ways.

1. Electronic timer - You can set the time, the heat level, and even the desired temperature of the product.

2. Temperature Probe - Stick the thermometer in the meat, set the cooker to stop when the roast hits 150-155 and go to work. Once the temperature is reached, the cooker goes into a warm mode for up to 10 hours more.

3. Lockable Lid - The lid can be clamped down to the cooker, not the pot itself. This way, the whole thing can be transported or you can hold more steam and moisture in thanks to the rubber gasket lining the lid.

4. Heavy Duty - The actual crock-pot is heavy and tough, meaning that you don't have to treat it with kid gloves. The pot is oven safe for those recipes that call for a crispy crust on top.

5. Stainless Steel - Stylish and easy to clean. Most modern lofts and apartments have stainless appliances anyway, so this fits in quite nicely.

I've cooked a chicken, a 10lb pork shoulder, my Spicy Sausage & Beef Cincinnati Style Chili, Mac n' Cheese, and more in this cooker. It has brought me much joy and many nom noms.

Tyson Spicy Chicken Breast Fillets.

What really surprised me about this product was how microwave friendly it was. Normally, things like this are best in the oven. In the microwave, they typically come out too hard or dry. This product was crisp on the edges and moist on the inside with slow, satisfying heat. I just make sandwiches with them using Klosterman's buns, swiss cheese, and a little blue cheese dressing.

I currently use an electric burner because I have a gas stove but I never turned the gas on. I just didn't want to deal with the hassle. The electric burner takes forever to heat up and the temperature controls are a little touchy. Here's what I'd love to get my hands on:

Meyer Induction Burner. Crate and Barrel. $199.95

From Crate and Barrel:

The hot plate goes haute with this state-of-the-art update. The high-frequency electromagnetic field penetrates a pan, circulating electric current that turns the pan itself into the heat source. This extremely efficient, environmentally friendly cooking method uses 90% of the energy created, compared to about 55% using traditional methods – and boils water twice as fast. Features include nine pre-set power levels, seven pre-set cooking temperatures, 10-hour timer and user-friendly control panel that slides inside the unit for compact storage (see additional photos). Perfect for an extra burner in the kitchen, tabletop cooking, buffet or dorm room.

Stainless steel, plastic and ceramic
9 pre-set power levels from low simmer to high
7 pre-set temperatures from 150 to 430 degrees
10-hour timer
Clean with a damp cloth

I want one.

So...what's your favorite thing?

Opinions, Facts, and Assholes Like Me.

2010-04-10T00:00:00.000-04:00

I'll try to make this brief, or at least, brief for me. I've gotten into a lot of heated exchanges with people over the last month about food science and food issues. I expect it, especially since the public has been indoctrinated to not trust a) corporations or b) anything mass produced.

That's fine to be skeptical, and as a matter of fact, it's most scientific to be skeptical. There has to be a point, however, when you are presented with facts or given the technical reality that negates your point of view, that you cede to reason.

All too often people retreat and hide behind this mantra, 'Well, that's my opinion'. Well, sometimes your opinion ceases to be an opinion and simply becomes dogma, a point of faith. I hate onions. Beer tastes like moldy iced tea and urine. Black chicks that are into rock music and girls with foreign accents are always hotter. These are opinions I hold.

The sky is blue. Organic food is more nutritious than conventional. Cold brew tea bags diffuse no faster than regular tea bags in cold water. These are not opinions, because these can be proven true or false.

I was tweeting with someone and they put Food Science in snarky quotes, as if to say it isn't really science. I think that may be part of the problem. People don't trust the source of the information. To clear this up real quick let me just say a couple things about food science.

There is no giant building called Food Science where everybody in the food industry meets and decides how to fool the public and fake research. Food Science is made up of industry professionals from researchers to executives and of academic professors and grad students. There are no corporate g-men looking over a master's student while she/he works on their thesis study. Large food companies have hundreds of researchers, technicians, and scientists that all did the work of learning about food science to get their degree before working for industry. It's not some conspiracy, designed to deceive you. Treat what a food science professional tells you with no less respect than a geologist telling you about rocks or an astrophysicist telling you about space.

And when we present the evidence and the facts and the studies, accept that you may no longer have an opinion, and that you may have just become wrong. We are all entitled to our own opinions, but we are not entitled to our own facts.

Follow me on Twitter @samvance and search for me on Facebook.

Jamie Oliver's Food [D]evolution.

2010-03-29T14:53:00.000-04:00

The title of this very short blog is clickable, so...you know...click it to see what I'm talking about.

I watched a piece that ABC's Nightline program did about Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. It was obviously about his show, but they did that thing where they just put the set and his show in the background without mentioning it as a sort of subliminal advert for the other ABC show. They show a clip where Oliver is in some lady's kitchen and has conjured up all the things she says she feeds her family during the week and piles all these things on a smallish kitchen table.

She was shamed by this(of course) to the point of tears and he then tells her that this food was endangering her family and shedding years off of their life. Nightline later shows a clip of lunch ladies being interrogated over food ingredients. Oliver again asks a shaming question of whether they know all the ingredients in the food item he was looking at. They didn't.

He was pointing out the 'chemicals' in the foods and was made that these chemicals were being fed to school children. It's 'chemicals' and deadly additives to Oliver and food activists like him, but to a food scientist, it all makes perfect sense. In some cases, the ingredients are very familiar(vinegar, baking powder, vitamin c) but regulations require the food companies to use the scientific names so you see things like ascorbic acid, boric acid, and acidic acid(not sure why I listed all acids). In other cases, the additive serves an important function in relation to shelf life, flavor, color, or it may even be a trace ingredient in another ingredient. For instance, you may see anti-caking agents mixed in with some flour/salt so they flow in the hopper at the plant.

Anything currently proven to be a danger is not in use. Anything GRAS (generally recognized as safe) is at the very least, only used in quantities that have no ill affects. For instance, an additive may be toxic once an ounce per pound of bodyweight is ingested, but the formulation might never have more than a hundreth of an ounce per serving, meaning that you would need to ingest 100 servings per pound of bodyweight. So if you weighed 100 pounds, you would need to ingest 1000 servings.

A major problem that food hysterics like Oliver have is that while educated in cooking, they are uneducated about food. Their ignorance of food science and things like how toxicity levels are determined give them a zero tolerance view on additives without scientific support for it. The science they do mention always fails to account for the volume of a particular additive it would take to make someone sick.

He makes a remarkable statement that underscores this theme of willful ignorance. I'm paraphrasing, but he says that if you don't understand something in the ingredient list, don't buy that food.

Let's apply this logic to other things in life, shall we?

Unless you've built computers from scratch and know all the components - don't buy a computer. If you don't understand the mechanics of the internal combustion engine and other major systems of a car - don't buy one. You can apply this leap in logic to bug spray, medicine, medical devices, video games, the shoes on your feet, or the paint on your walls.

The lady from the beginning of the story was interviewed and said that thanks to Jaimie's intervening, she has lost 40 lbs. For her and her kids, she cut out chips, snacks, and pop. The problem is that she was told those things made her fat, and not that it was the excess calories. Sure if you stop eating 10% of the foods you normally eat, it stands to reason that you'll lose 10% of the weight.

The problems:

No real education about food and nutrition, just misinformation and scaremongering. It's awesome that Jamie Oliver teaches people how to use ingredients and plan out and make a meal. This can save people money and they can lose weight if they reduce their caloric intake. Also, Nightline offered no interviews with food scientists or food science academics to counter what he said. Once again, America gets half the story.

Hooter's Culture of Critical Safety Violations.

2010-03-10T21:57:00.000-05:00

A while back, I wrote a piece that graded Hooter's(they got a C) and provided many suggestions on improvements that need to be made. A couple weeks back, I had reached a saturation point with Hooter's culture of food safety - or lack there of. I contacted the person running their twitter acct, who then gave me an email address to officially respond to. I was happy that my complaints would be taken seriously, and hopeful that I would be part of their process of addressing these issues and ultimately changing them.

I received no response.

I then contacted the Cincinnati Inquirer who gave me an email of a reporter who might take a look into the issue - she didn't. The Inquirer did suggest that I take the issue up with a local news station, which I haven't done. I didn't want this to be about me getting on tv. Before I go any further, let me share the letter I emailed to what I understood to be Hooter's Corporate.

"Dear sir or madame;

   I am Sam Vance. You know me from Twitter.com as @samvance. I mean to email you in order to make you aware of issues that may heavily impact your operations, but first, let me give you a background on myself.

   I am a Fall 2007 graduate of The Ohio State University with a degree in Food Business Management. My studies included deep immersion into food science, food safety, and operations management for the food industry. I also have several years of management experience in restaurant management with KFC as well as seven years of total work experience at that chain. I know food safety from both an industrial and a restaurant level and I know chicken. Of course I'm not bragging, but rather, laying a foundation so that you don't disregard this email as ill-informed or hysterical. I have long been a fan of Hooters, and let me say that what I tell you or suggest to you in this email should not be construed as me stating my hatred for the chain. Quite the contrary, I see great opportunities in improving key issues that I have observed in not just the Newport, KY location, but across several states.

   I went to the Newport location last evening to take advantage of the All You Can Eat promotion and sat at the bar since I was dining alone. What I observed in the next hour or so astounded me.

I witnessed numerous instances of cross contamination, including:

*Employees grabbing flour covered baskets, then immediately grabbing bowls to sauce wings as well as grabbing the wings themselves.
*I saw an employee put a dirty bowl on top of a bowl of cooked and unsauced wings in order to carry them both to another table.
*I saw sauced chicken falling off the bowl of cooked product on to the uncleaned prep table, only to be picked up and set on the plate and served.
*Employees who had just removed their vinyl gloves(after touching raw product, as they should) but then carrying the bowl used to toss the wings with their bare hands(with their thumb inside of the sauce covered bowl). This bowl was used for the rest of the night without being cleaned.

*I personally witnessed the manager, Chris, handle prepared foods with his bare hands. His hands were flour covered. He also picked up a stray tater-tot from the prep table and put it on a customers plate. He then wipes his floured hands on the front of his jeans before scooping cheese sauce for a server. He had flour going up his arm to the elbow and the flour by his elbow remained the entire time I was there. During this time he was constantly reaching into and over things.

I will say that the two black guys working in the back did an excellent job swapping out gloves in between going from raw to cooked, but all kitchen employees(manager included) treated the gloves as an alternative to hand washing. In most cases, they wore the gloves too long, didn't wash hands before changing gloves, and did a poor job in the few instances that hands were washed(like still having flour on the arm an hour later). I'll also say that I have never seen a manager wear a hat when going back to help in the kitchen. Why? The cooks obviously cover their heads and so should the manager.

This all seems very harsh, but let me say that this is a system wide issue. I have seen issues similar to this and a couple worse in Hooter's in Burlington VT, Columbus OH, other Cincinnati area locations, and in Florida. My reaction would be to assume that either this is common practice, or this is unavoidable due to the procedures in place. Either way, your chain plays Russian Roulette with the public's safety on a daily basis and it is miraculous that you have avoided major lawsuits. This could be due to the fact that people get food borne illness many more times a year than what is reported and since this is a bar, the patrons may be blaming some of it on the alcohol. Of course, the other explanation is much more sad - they don't complain because that is the kind of thing they expect from Hooters.

   Let me also say that the bartender who served me last night(Chrissy/Christy?) was very nice and even sensed that something was wrong. In fact, she notified Chris, who personally came over to ask if everything was alright. I didn't bring any of this up because in a crowded restaurant, I'm sure Chris would have only become defensive and suspected that I was trying to cause a scene. He even sensed that I was holding something back when he asked, 'Are you sure?'

   This issue goes beyond one location, however, and several changes do need to take place in order to reduce your system's liability. I have many ideas that will streamline some of your processes as well as guard against food safety issues. If you like, I can discuss these over the phone or in person. Again, I am not trying to harm this restaurant chain. I am a fan of the food and want to help Hooters operate in a way which doesn't put the consumer's safety at risk.

Thank you for your time and consideration in both reading and responding to this email,
Sam Vance.

614.905.xxxx Feel free to call."

I redacted the last 4 digits of my cell phone numbers and corrected the word 'excellent', which I misspelled. Other than that, this was the email I sent and the issues are very real.

For those unaware, cross contamination is anytime cooked product comes into contact with uncooked product. For example:

Raw chicken is breaded in <---> flour.

Flour is on employees <---> hands(gloves optional here).

Uncleaned hand touches <---> fry basket and is lowered into the fryer.

Product done & another employee lifts fry basket with <---> flour on the handle.

Product dumped into metal bowl <---> bowl carried by hand that touched flour(with thumb hooking inside of the bowl).

Product taken out of that bowl by hand and placed into yet <---> another bowl.

Bowl gripped on the side with thumb on the inside of the saucing bowl <---> and sauce is added and tossed with the wings.

Wing dumped onto a plate which are served <---> to you.

It may seem inconsequential, but you have now ingested whatever salmolnella was in that chicken before cooking due to cross contamination. Although the wings are heated to a high enough temperature to kill bacteria and the sauce probably has a low enough amount of free water to prevent bacterial growth, the mixture of chicken grease, sauce residue(same bowls used all night), and freshly inoculated thumb do create an environment where harmful microorganisms can not only survive, but thrive. The surface of the wing is not hot enough for long enough to kill the bacteria it encounters after cooking.

A week after this incident, which occurred the last Wednesday in February, I ventured out to the Florence Hooter's to see if things were any better.

They were not.

The added insult to injury was the inattentive service I got, partly due to it being during a shift change and partly due to the bartender chatting with the regulars. The kitchen was left understaffed for the shift change. I'm not sure if people were late, or there was only one 1st shifter in the kitchen, but there was only one person for a while. The number one enemy of food safety is time. Something left out too long creates an environment where bacteria grow, and not enough time in the kitchen means that corners get cut. Food safety lives in these corners and this is where people get sick.

The lone cook, who I think was named Aaron or Eric, had a very troublesome habit. He worked with a vinyl glove on one hand and no glove on another. I have observed this practice at several locations, including the putrid Newport restaurant. People are supposed to be told that these gloves are no substitute for hand washing and that the gloves have to be changed whenever going from raw to cooked or non-food to food. My theory is that this cook worked Jackson Style to avoid washing his hands and changing his glove. The ungloved hand held the sauce bowl(thumb in bowl!!) while the gloved hand breaded the product. When he needed to plate food, he took off the glove but did not wash his hands.

The title to this blog is a clickable link. You'll see that I'm not alone in these complaints. If Hooter's management reads this and is upset... you should be. Correct this before it really costs you. I am more than willing to consult with you on ways to improve your processes and increase safety. This blog is long enough and I think I'll leave my specific suggestions for another time.

Real Food.

2010-03-02T15:40:00.007-05:00

I have yet to weigh in on the 'real food' phenomenon, so here it goes...

I am a big fan of language. Words matter to me and I try to be very measured in what I type or say. Now I don't want to get into the whole sender-receiver model of communication, but it's important that the words we say are understood by the receiver to have the same meaning. So when someone says something is hot, it's important whether the receiver thinks you mean temperature or flavor.

CNN picked up on a blogger's challenge to eat only real food for a month http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/23/real.food.challenge/index.html?hpt=C1

Within the article, they define real food as not processed foods. They actually say what real food isn't and not what real food is, which I think is intriguing. They define processed food as: "... any food that has undergone a change of character. For example, edamame would be unprocessed, and tofu would be processed."

No.

Processed foods are foods that have a process applied to them. This includes rinsing, chopping, heating, freezing, beating (as in sheer force aka meringue or butter), or sanitizing. Unless you eat your organic grown veggies whole without cooking them, you are eating a processed food.

Any milk that isn't raw would also be considered processed, and therefore, not 'real'.

This can't be the intended definition of real food though, right? Seems a bit too strict, paranoid, and in many instances - dangerous. What do they really mean by 'real food'?

I'll take a crack at it.

They mean guilt free, non-corporate, and pretty.

These labels that the ironically labeled foodies put forth are a complicated mix of all the vitriol and mistrust they feel about the world around them. You see, they feel the corporations are all corrupt and are conspiring to poison the masses and control them through their fake foods. Let's run down the list of these corporate supported evils, shall we?

Instant potatoes - [gasp] The absolute worst. You should be ashamed if you don't have an hour to peel and boil potatoes, then mash them with cream.
**reality** They are mashed potatoes. They're just drum dried (dehydrated) so that they are shelf stable.

American Cheese Singles - Too lazy to invest in a good cheese slicer? No self respecting foodie would be caught dead with this in their refrigerator!
**reality** Developed in Europe, American cheese is made of the melted remnants of other cheeses. It's now made in a more consistant way, but isn't technically a vat cheese. Whether sliced off a block or peeled from the plastic, American Cheese melts better than most and has a mild flavor profile, making it ideal for sandwiches.

Sugar - Did you know that sugar makes everybody fat, causes diabetes, and probably hates minorities. It's so evil, because it's processed.
**reality** I prefer to use sugar that has been inspected, purified, and separated from most pebbles, dirt, and insect parts. Sugar is a food for fermentation also, resulting in alcohol, carbon dioxide, or both. Sugar sweetens foods, helps it brown when baked, and binds free water - making it safe from certain microorganisms.

The truth.

Real food is anything you eat and digest that offers calories and/or nutrition(carbs, vitamins, proteins, fats). When you hear someone talk about 'real food', your ears should perk up and you should start asking questions. You'll almost always find hidden motives, agendas, and irrational paranoia just below the surface.

The Race To Zero.

2010-02-23T20:51:00.005-05:00

This week (Feb. 21 - 27, 2010) is National Eating Disorder week and I thought I would share a concern I had since it goes with that theme.

A few years back, I was one of the first member's of Ohio State University's Campus Dining Services Advisory Council. The council weighed in on issues impacting the food and service there of for the 50,000+ students of OSU. Campus Dining Services had taken in $36 million in revenue for the previous year, so they fed a lot of students in their then 22 facilities. The new Union is set to open if it hasn't already and those numbers are sure to grow.

One item of business at the first meeting I attended was to discuss ways to educate the diners on so they could make responsible food choices. One idea was to post the calories per serving for every item prepared in house(prepackaged items already do this). It seemed very reasonable and I even added that they should also post the amounts of protein, fat, sodium, and carbs.

There was a nutrition student in the group, that had a concern.

'What about people with eating disorders?' She asked.

Her experience was that freshman women were already stressing over their figure and by seeing the calories per serving they'll be less inclined to eat certain foods. Anyone remember the Freshman 15? This seems like a good thing considering American's general over-consumption. She explained that they don't stop cutting calories and the people she worked with as a nutrition major were essentially eating like it was a golf match. Fewest calories wins. So instead of having a caloric goal in mind, for instance 100/200 calories less than they typically consume based on activity and body weight, they try to eat only very low calorie foods in an effort to stay as close to zero as possible. They suppliment their diets with things like mints, cigarettes, and bottled water.

I call this the Race To Zero.

Posting calories makes us feel better, like we're doing what we can in the battle of the bulge. I think that battle we wage makes us unhealthier and endangers those in our society who's minds trick them into seeing themselves as bigger than they really are.

The major problem with solutions that many people post are that they are very narrow minded and not based in science and reason. Yahoo! or: thewebsiteIlovetohate! constantly posts stories about the 'worst foods'. They've had stories about the worst restaurants, appetizers, burgers, breakfast foods, desserts, salads, and the latest is fries. What makes these foods the worst? Calories, according to the articles. Every food that is demonized is demonized on calories.

So now we are posting the calories of everything while simultaneously running stories that demonize foods for how many calories are in them. What are people supposed to take from that? Calories = bad. Less calories = good. Zero calories = perfect.

Folks... Zero calories = dead.

The problem with posting calories for one item is that it doesn't take into consideration everything else the person had or will have to eat that day. The only way this can work is if people understand how many calories they need and how many calories they already had.

A very crude measurement is to multiply your weight by 11(for women) or 12(for men). This gives you a crude measurement of how many calories are necessary to maintain that body weight. So ladies, wanna know what it takes to be 115lbs??
You cannot consume more than 1,265 calories a day without factoring in physical activity.
A 200lb man by comparison can consume 2,400 calories a day and not gain.

As I said, physical activity offsets these numbers. This is why Michael Phelps can consume many thousands of calories a day. He trains in a pool 8 hours a day and his metabolism is extremely high. So there are many factors that affect weight. Girls, if you are 5'10" and at least have an average musculature, then I'm sorry, but you have no business weighing 115lbs. Consuming only 1,200 calories a day can kill you.

The numbers I gave were the absolute bottom for maintaining organ function. Standing burns calories. Sitting burns calories. Sleep burns calories. Obviously, things like; walking, running, swimming, weight training, yoga, and pilates all result in your need for more calories. You have to count the calories spent on every activity and add them up to get a realistic idea of how many calories you need.

Henry Cardello has a book called Stuffed Nation where he offers the solution of incentivizing the food industry to cut the calories in the foods they make. I think it's a novel plan but I also think we have a risk of this biting us in the ass.

Let me paint a not so rosie picture...

This plan works really well. Calories are cut by a lot...maybe 30% or more. Everyone wants the incentives and the reduced calories makes their products more profitable. It quickly becomes an R&D's version of an arms race... a Race To Zero. Tragedy strikes! It could be war, drought, early frost, a new ice age, raised ocean levels driving the populations of the world inland and leaving less farmland, whatever situation you can conjure up.

The food supply is now scarce and we are forced to ration what we have so that everyone may have some food. The problem now is the opposite; people aren't getting enough calories and they're getting sick. People's immune systems start to fail. Common colds are debilitating. Manual labor is something we no longer have the energy for. People are weakened and less able to fight in battle. We are overrun by another country. Some assimilate, many more are massacred.

Ok, so that's a crazy Mad Max extreme, but it illustrates that it's the total diet that matters most and not the calories in Outback's Aussie Cheese Fries.

So let's educate people on a diet of moderation. Stop eating when you start to feel full (not after). Try to eat a variety of things(yes, that includes meat and seafood, hippies). Save the rich foods and desserts for special occasions and spend the rest of the time eating reasonably. Go outside, run around, play a sport, get exercise. If you find you have gained weight, monitor the calories in what you eat for a week and see where you are over indulging. That's it.

So we have two extremes; obesity and dangerously thin that are getting all the attention. I suggest our social policy as it related to food and health be well rounded and based in science and education. But whatever you do, please don't turn our nation's diet into a Race To Zero.

Dear Anonymous...

2010-02-19T19:20:00.005-05:00

This post is a response to Anonymous' comment on my blog: The Naked Truth. It became too long to not use as it's own blog post. Please re-read that blog if you haven't already and check out her full comment.

My comment about preservatives being neither good nor bad was not a comment on the functionality of the preservative (good, or else food companies would save money by not using them), but rather in terms of healthy/unhealthy. They aren't specifically bad for you, and not specifically good for you either - other than the fact that they inhibit certain microbial growth, thus making the food safer.

It's interesting how everything is either health food or junk food to some people. How do you define health food. Does one serving have to provide specific quantities of every nutrient? Does it have to be low fat, sodium, calories, sugar? If so, are you prepared to show me sound, peer reviewed science that fat, sugar, sodium, and calories of any quantity are bad? Healthy is another loaded term and very much depends on the person and a tally of everything else they have eaten that day/week. For instance, if you are short by a certain amount of fat, protein, and calories... a Snickers bar could complete your diet. In this case, it would have positively contributed to your health and can be considered healthy.

p.s.
Today's clickable link will lead you to the American Center on Science and Health and a study/experiment headed up by Dr. Ruth Kava PhD, R.D. which tried to analyze nutrient intake, and in one instance, see if weight loss was possible on a McDonald's only diet for 30 days.

The Naked Brain: activism minus science.

2010-02-12T10:17:00.005-05:00

The winner of the 2010 TED gift is Celebrity Chef Jamie Oliver. TED stands for Technology Entertainment Design and is a nonprofit foundation that features lectures and presentations by many of our species greatest minds. TED presentations focus on science, technology, and humanity. I love their site and have spent entire days watching people demonstrate cutting edge technology. I watched Bill Clinton give a very inspiring speech as he accepted his TED gift. The TED gift is a financial award that the winner can apply to their research or cause.
"I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity"

OK. This sounds great, right? Everyone wants families to cook more and everyone wants little kids to not be so fat, and everyone wants to be sustainable. Whew! I feel all warm and bubbly inside already.

But what does that actually mean?

Sustainable is the most loaded, overused term in the modern era(2nd only to 'fresh'). It should mean that what you do(grow, produce, manufacture) is used in such a way that the component parts that make up what you do are replenished at a rate that keeps pace with what you are doing.

Sustainable logging means that you plant trees to replace what you cut and more trees are ready to harvest before you run out of trees.

Sustainable manufacturing is a little more tricky: I think it's using sources of renewable energy to produce items that are made with recyclable materials.

Sustainable food should mean that, like trees, you are planting what you take. But then people say, 'Well, fertilizers can pollute, so it can't be sustainable if you use those.' Then other people say, 'Hey, this food is trucked 500 miles, so it isn't sustainable.'

It's such a loaded term and what I think people really think it should mean is this: Sustainable means I don't feel guilty anymore.

Jamie Oliver also says he wants to create a movement to educate children about food. His wish is for a movement. His goal is more activism. His wish isn't that children get educated about food, his wish is for a movement. That is fairly important.

Jamie Oliver is a brand. You can assign a value to him as an entity, based on ratings for cooking shows, endorsement deals, cookbook sales, etc. What a brand such as him really needs is a cause... a movement.

My original intent was to separate fact from fiction concerning his movement, but as I investigated, I noticed that there aren't really facts involved, so I will consider the actual idea and theme of his movement.

The title of this blog is a clickable link that goes to Oliver's site where you can see this all for yourself.

So here is what I get from his movement:
Nutritious School lunches using local, sustainable, real food.
Families that prepare meals at home.
Educating kids about food.
Fighting the scourge that is obesity [grrr!]

First off, I'm a little confused by the school lunch program to be honest. Is the goal to provide food since the kids are stuck there for 6-8 hours? Or is the goal to provide complete nutrition, as if the only food they get is at school? This makes a huge difference, by the way. If the idea is that this has to be enough food in case they aren't fed at all at home, then you need much more calorie dense and nutrient dense foods. If you're just providing food to as one meal out of several then you don't need as many calories and it can be just enough to satiate hunger without making the kid tired after lunch.

Jamie Oliver takes several shots at processed foods. The following is from his School Food Charter:
"Don’t just look for the USDA symbol. How many ingredients do you recognize? How many are adding nutritional value to the food? Remember, real food, cooked fresh, doesn’t need additives, preservatives, or anything artificial. Processed food is often full of these things."

Oh boy... First off, he equates the goodness of food with the number of ingredients. Then he makes a statement about real food being fresh(another loaded term) which means that processed foods aren't real. His line of logic then concludes with a statement demonizing preservatives. He's also playing on people's lack of education about food science. It would be impossible to make this arguments stick if people knew what the preservatives were for and that they really are harmless.

These are old, tired arguments from the food hysterics. Processed food is bad and it isn't real, and there are things in it we don't immediately understand, so that makes it bad. Preservatives are neither good nor bad. They're preservatives.

Processed food is real and uses the same methods you would use in the kitchen, just mechanized for mass production. Example: instant mashed potatoes.

What do you do when you make mashed potatoes? Peel and cut potatoes, boil potatoes to cook them, mash the potatoes, and mix in seasonings and cream.

What does a factory do to make mashed potatoes? Peel and cut potatoes, boil potatoes to cook them, mash the potatoes, and mix in seasonings and cream. They just go the additional step of drying the mashed potatoes and packaging the powder.

Do you test your mashed potatoes for micro organisms? Do you have others thoroughly inspect your kitchen for cleanliness and safety every day? No? The factory does.

I'm concerned that Jamie Oliver is simply taking old arguments that weren't based in science and is repackaging them to help sell his brand. After all, a family learning to cook, is going to need cookwear, and a cookbook or an instructional dvd. Mr. Oliver takes digs at processed foods, but look what he has on his site here: http://www.jamieoliver.com/cupboard

Hmm.. That stuff looks familiar. Can't quite put my finger on it, but I feel like I've seen that before. I don't see how he has the time to cook all of this food at home and package it for sale. Surely, he doesn't use contract food manufacturers(private labels) to make a product line and put his name on it.

Hypocritical and completely tone-deaf.

He also advocates eating on plates and using metal utensils. Who's going to pay for this?
His plan would essentially turn school cafeterias into 3 star restaurants for children that eat there for a half hour and usually at around 10AM. You want proper table settings? Fine. You will also need to hire additional personelle and you'll need to buy a Hobart C-line dishwasher to accommodate the volume of dishes. You'll need more staff to work longer hours chopping, sauteing, simmering, and roasting food. These are real culinary skills, so you'll need to bump up the pay to attract the talent that can actually pull this off. You want local, raw ingredients? Then you need to contact local purveyors and get more deliveries, more often, and you will pay a premium for it.

Not only does Mr. Oliver not consult food science and nutrition experts on his plans, but check out the people on his must see list.
He lists Marion Nestle, Michael Pollan, the movies Food Inc. and Two Angry Moms, and The Centre For Science In The Public Interest (not really science).

What I gather from all of this is that Jamie Oliver is at the very least, misguided about food issues and falls into the same trap many other well intentioned, misinformed folks fall into. More than that, Jamie Oliver is more concerned about his brand than children, evidenced by his TED gift acceptance speech where he states that his wish was for a movement...not for specific changes. This gift coincides perfectly with his new ABC series Food Revolution and compliments his books, dvd's, cookware, and yes, even his line of processed foods.

Can we please return to science and reason as a means to shape policy?

Stop Breaking Their Bell's.

2010-01-26T00:15:00.003-05:00

Many people have been outraged over Taco Bell's new Drive Thru Diet ad campaign, but I think they are heading in the right direction.

We have this vision of what we think is the right way to live in this country. We have this for exercise, for morals, for ethics, and for food.

When it comes to food we tend to demonize and shun. How many times have you said or heard someone say, 'I'm being sooo bad' in relation to food? We have a certain level of guilt over things we eat. A lot of us, myself included, eat too much. What many people do in response to that is to completely shun.

'I stopped drinking pop.'
'I don't eat meat.'
'I don't eat anything processed.'

People shun out of guilt and misinformation. These people DO lose weight in many cases, but may be misled as to why. Pop is 170 - 200 calories a can. Meat(protein) is 9kcal/gram while carbs are I think 4kcal/gram, so not eating meat cuts out a lot of calories. 'Processed' - which is a loaded term - tends to have high caloric values as well. When people lose weight, they lose sight of that and think that it's because those foods were bad and now they are on the good graces of the food gods. It isn't the MSG or HFCS that makes us overweight, it's the extra calories.

OK, so on to Taco Bell...

The ad basically states that by eating certain items on the menu instead of other items, they can lose weight. It really depends on how much you were going there before and what you were ordering. So they aren't lying, it just depends on a couple factors. I do think this is a reasonable and realistic approach to weight loss for many people.

Let's face it folks, many of you are out the door w/out breakfast in the morning, hit a Starbucks drive thru on the way to work, out to eat for lunch, and everybody in your family is scattered going to practices, and games, and working different shifts come dinner time. You probably eat out a lot or eat a lot of frozen dinners/hot pockets and whatnot. Most people preach diets that involve steady meals, mostly eaten at home with some thought and planning put into them. But is that realistic for your life? Ideally, I would suggest planning the weeks menu, using the last off day before the next week as a grocery/prep day so you can quickly and easily make a planned meal every day of that week. Who can honestly commit to that?

Let's think about Jared from Subway for a moment. Remeber when you first saw him holding up his trophy fat pants? What were you thinking?

'Holy shit, I've got to eat more Subway!'

Why did Jared's diet work? Three C's: cutting calories consistently. When he went to Subway, he got one of the same one or two different subs the same way and he walked more. The calories he started taking in were less and they were less consistently. So every day he was running a calorie deficit. Every time that deficit hit 3,500 calories, Jared deducted a pound.

Many diets start off by cutting calories but are too militant, too fast. People get crazy hungry(hungry like the wolf, I say...well, me and Duran Duran) and then go overboard because everything in there body is screaming EAT!!! Jared was consistent. He probably could have cut way more, and shunned everything, but then his diet would have crashed.

OK, back to Taco Bell again... seriously.
If eating a meal or two at Taco Bell interests your taste buds and if the things you would get on the menu are less calories than what you honestly would eat anyway, then you can lose weight. However you can do this with any food. As a matter of fact, Ozzy Osbourne did this on the first season of The Osbournes on MTV. During an episode, Ozzy mentions being on a Chipotle diet, where he'd stock up on his favorite burritos and eat them every day. He would only eat half a burrito at a time and he said he lost 10 pounds. Bam! Chipotle diet. Hell, you could do a Twinkie diet if you really wanted to: All the Twinkies you want as long as the total calories consumed at the end of the day is at a 400 calorie deficit. I guarantee you will lose 1 pound every 8-9 days.

Legit issues with the diet(Taco Bell, not Twinkie) is that it doesn't factor in total fat consumption or sodium. Here's the thing though, were you watching those things before? No? Then worry about the pounds first then fine-tune the diet to factor in nutrients and sodium/potassium.

Takeaway (take out?) Message.
So the diet isn't bullshit, it just depends on what you were eating to begin with. Ricky Gervais does a great joke about a man that weighed 1,000 pounds and was about to have gastric bypass surgery. By the way, if we can live even for a couple years at 1,000 lbs then can we really call 300+ lbs morbidly obese? Really? Anyway, the guy talked about how he ate 9 pie n chips a day. Ricky's line was (while raising his hand) 'Ooh, ooh, I have an idea... 8 pie n chips.'

So quit bustin' the Bell's balls, will ya?

p.s.
I predict a trend in the coming year will be reduced sodium. This is good, but as with calories, the goal is not zero. Calories are units of energy and you need a certain amount to keep the organs running. Don't believe me, ask Tracy Gold. Sodium plays a role cell fluid opposite of potassium. I would think that we may start seeing some functional foods promoted that contain elevated levels of potassium.

Debating an Etch n Sketch & Feeding a Mannequin...

2010-01-15T22:59:00.004-05:00

Right off the bat, let me say this: I had the pleasure speaking to @follownathan on Twitter the last few days and today(Friday), I called him and did a recorded audio interview. The interview went well, aside from my rambling and my voice, which annoys even me. Also there was a feedback that, thankfully, didn't translate to the recorded audio but it did trip me up a couple times and caused me to lose my line of thinking. My blog title is the link to Nathan's website where you may hear the roughly 30 minutes of audio.

Just a note: my blog titles are usually clickable links relating to things that I'm talking about.

Normally, the people I talk to about food science and the food industry are receptive to what I have to say. Even when they disagree, they hear me out, ask follow up questions, and walk away with a better understanding of the subject at hand and more receptive to hear/reading/seeing more to educate themselves. That's how it should go, and most of the time, that's how it is... most of the time.

I've dealt with a couple people over this last week that approached the discourse with a certain amount of disrespect and immaturity. In both cases, they were convinced they were right and it seems like nothing will ever convince them otherwise.

This is completely at odds with how science works. It should start with a curiosity about something in the world that you can test...a hypothesis. This can be skeptical, but it's usually a scientists nature to be skeptical, so it shows in the design of the study, not in the hypothesis. We tests a hypothesis by eliminating all but one variable. We record all possible data in a consistant manner, report on that data, publish that report in a scientific journal, and other scientists (skeptics) try to duplicate the study and see if the results reproducable. If so, then until proven otherwise, this is accepted as fact. If not, then the experiment is tweaked to try to eliminate more variables, report more data, and tighten up the controls to reduce the chance of error.

That is science. When an idea survives the scientific method, a fact is born. At this point, it is the responsibility of any remaining skeptics to prove it's wrong , not for the scientists to prove it's right. Now imagine you are talking to someone less than mature about some study and it's outcomes. What do you do if they keep saying, 'No, that's wrong. Prove it. Prove it again.'?

We had #agchat on Tuesday and I hope it went well. I got a comment in before it was running too slow for me to follow. Many of you had a chance to interact with and I had an interaction with @culinaryhatchet.

My interaction was saying that on the whole, more people prefer grain fed beef to grass fed. This is a fact based on a test that Cornell did. I think it was a single blind forced preference taste test. I also mentioned that a grain diet offers a more complete nutrition, while grass fed is entirely dependent on the nutrient levels of the pasture land. Most of the time, some kind of supplements are necessary.

This person had a major fit and demanded to see proof. He's/she's right unless I can prove him/her wrong. I did as far as taste goes, but I never found an actual study for the remark about nutrition. My logic there was the fact that the roughage is sampled and tested with dairy cattle. You need to know the nutrient level of the silage so you can put what's missing in the feed you order. But anyway, the person never believed me. I also hit him/her with the fact that grass fed have a 50% larger carbon footprint. He/she wanted to know who I was working for. I guess in his/her mind, if you work for someone that supports the view you have... then your view doesn't count.

This is a fundamental fallacy in a scientific debate. Science has no employer. Just because a guy for the National Pork Council makes a statement about pork being safe, doesn't mean he's lying. He can be lying, but who he works for doesn't matter. There is this accepted idea that everything and everyone is in on some sort of fix. Somehow, everything is a conspiracy.

I'm getting off track here.

Many of you interacted with @culinaryhatchet in good faith that you were having an honest and helpful dialogue, that your views were respected and that person was listening to what you said as you were listening to them.

I found that @culinaryhatchet has a blog and posted excerpts from the #agchat discussion. Many of the remarks made were catty in nature and made me think that @culinaryhatchet is the type of person that reads those entertainment weekly's and makes catty comments about what the people in the pictures are wearing.

Here's some of what this person put in his blog:
'On to the players and their Tweets:

#agchat is hosted by Michele Payn-Knoper, principal of Cause Matters Corp.

#agchat is a “weekly moderated conversation on Twitter for people in the business of raising food, feed, fuel, fiber.”

Hmmm… distinct omission of “consumer.” And that’s how I felt on #agchat.

Last’s night’s topic was “Antibiotics and their use in food production.” A topic about which I am most passionate.

Question 1: Can someone explain why we use antibiotics in livestock?

Great question! Time for some honest answers…(NOTE: not in chronological order, well, except for the first one.)

First answer: AgriBlogger (Chuck Zimmerman is the professional agriblogger, farm podcaster and President of ZimmComm New Media): For the same reason we use them in people. Doesn't that make sense?

Pure genius. NOT.'

'Time for some honest answers' Classic conspiracy theory. Only the answer he/she wants to hear is good enough, all else is a lie in his/her mind.

Of course, even though I was unable to participate, I wasn't immune to his/her vitriol.
'This guy is easily the most annoying person in #agchat (other than me), plus you just have to love his explanation samvance (Sam Vance Cincinnati, OH; Edible Intelligence OSU degree Re: Food Science & Tech. Also sarcastic/smells of cookies): anti-bio's used for herd/farm/food safety. You can't process an animal that is already dead or sick.

I think his blog name, Intelligence is an oxy-moron. '

I'd like to point out that you need two things for an oxymoron, so no... Intelligence is not an oxymoron.

So what do rational, science minded, sane people do when confronted with such a person?
Take a deep breath, be patient, and don't give up.

Invite @culinaryhatchet to tour your farm.
We also need to share research studies.
Don't hide who you work for.
Admit when something you say is incorrect or where a company you work for has gone wrong.

Most of all, don't engage in debate when you are unsure of where it's going. Take a minute and be a little measured when you speak/tweet. Be professional. Keep links to studies that prove your point. Use tabbed browsing, it is your friend. If there isn't a study, explain the science and why something can't be the way someone is convinced it is. Don't lie.

We have to be at our best when engaged in conversation about food and ag issues.. Make sure you are drawing a distinction between an opinion and a fact.

And like I have been saying(borrowed from Al Franken):
We are entitled to our own opinions. We are not entitled to our own facts.

Food Rules For Idiots.

2010-01-07T23:19:00.002-05:00

I was catching up on episodes of The Daily Show and Monday's guest was the infamous Micheal Pollan. He was on to promote his new book, "Food Rules". This book is a continuation of his other food related work, which is light on science/facts and heavy on oversimplified advice based on a false premise.

The book is meant to be a series of quirky do's and don'ts that will help you lead a healthier lifestyle. One example of a rule he gave to Jon Stewart was not to eat any cereal that colors your milk. It sounds very sage-like and quaint but is not based on science.

What is he saying? Is he saying that the food coloring used is harmful to your health? Is he saying that those foods tend to be higher in calories? Is this another high fructose corn syrup warning? He isn't clear, but to leave to be sure, allow me to settle each of these issues.

HFCS.
I've already been over this. it's the same as sugar. No worse.

Calories.
Too many calories are bad for anyone's health. The problem comes in demonizing a specific foods. It's not a specific food and it's not one meal, it's all meals over a long time. It takes 3500 calories to make a pound and many pound to cause health problems. An adult will burn at least 1800 calories in a day and up to several thousand more if they are very active or have high metabolism. A 3,000 calories Aussie Cheese Fries appetizer from Outback Steakhouse isn't something you should eat every day, but it isn't intrinsically bad. If you haven't had those, by the way, please do and be sure to share! It will have be a great source of fat, sodium, starch, protein, and other vital minerals/nutrients. A bowl of cereal, on the other hand, might have 200 calories including the milk. You have to eat a lot of cereal for it to make you fat. If I were trying to gain weight, it would be very low on my list of foods to eat.

Food coloring.
No credible studies link ailments to the use of food coloring, certainly not in the quantities used in production. This is one of my examples of the Illusion of Fact. it's said enough that people don't question the information, they just assume it's true because people are still saying it. 'Oh sure, everyone knows that.' is the response that you can get to these statements that aren't even true. Actually, Pollan's entire career of food writing can be attributed to this phenomenon.

This interesting exchange came up in the interview where Jon Stewart asked if there is going to be some big finding that shows food industry leaders lied and withheld info about how bad their food is just like with the tobacco industry. Part of Michael Pollan's response was to say that Food Science is very sophisticated.

I find this to be a very remarkable admission on his part. The context of the question was about proof of danger to the public health. He is either saying that food science is over his head or that 1,000's of food scientists the world over are involved in a vast conspiracy. He's making a ton of money doing this, folks. This isn't just a hobby for him.

He has the means to go to UC Davis in California, or to Cornell in New York, or even to my Alma Mater, Ohio State and learn from world class food science departments. He doesn't. Michael Pollan chooses to be willfully ignorant about food science. Think about it; what happens when he learns that what he's been telling people isn't true? He has now built a career on his claims about food and the food industry. He would be ruined. No more appearances on Good Morning America or The Daily Show, or Conan. His credibility would be shot.

And make no mistake, his credibility would be shot to hell because he is wrong about food. I think I should start an online petition for one of the schools I listed to give him a free ride scholarship so he can be a food science student. I'd love to see his face when they burst his bubble, and believe me, it will get busted early and often. I've seen it in students that have similar beliefs about food. Usually, they'll assert themselves and very matter-of-factly make some statement about food that they know to be true. The class pauses before the professor very calmly and patiently shows how that is false. And the instructors won't belittle them at all. They'll use math or draw pictures of chemical structures or refer to studies that they have been privy to and slowly the misinformation, like so much plaque on the brain is removed.

The Illusion of Facts.

2009-12-11T21:54:00.003-05:00

Hello. It's been a while since I last posted on here. The things I write about aren't current events as much as it's science. Apples fall from trees just as they did in Newton's time. The same sort of thing is true of food science. So these musings can also serve as a reference. That also means that I don't really need to do one of these every day (unless web traffic increases 100x).

This isn't easy subject matter to be prolific about. I know what I know because I learned it. I sold my textbooks because I'm poor and it becomes difficult to cite things. Many studies are done every year, but then again, you have to pay to get these studies. I had access to these things at Ohio State in a huge database through OSU's great online library system, but I don't now. That hurts the food industry if you ask me. All studies should be put out for easy access. The other thing that hurts the food industry is that you train for it only after you've decided on it as a profession. It's kind of like pro wrestling in that respect. You only go to wrestling school if you want to be a wrestler.

Anyway... There is a lack of background knowledge in the area of food science. The only people that learn food science are academics who will go on to teach and people that go on to work in the food industry. So most industry people just chuckle when a Michael Pollan comes along with his theories about food. To the general public that doesn't have this general knowledge base, however, Pollan looks like the expert.

This is a situation I call the Illusion of Fact. This phenomena happens in many sciences where the general public has been starved of education about an industry. Any voice they hear will resonate and ring true, especially if you need a functional background in some other discipline to understand it. Jenny McCarthy goes on Oprah and talks about how vaccinations cause autism. It doesn't, but when this first came up, doctors ignored the low level rumblings because they seemed silly. Now we have parents refusing to vaccinate in the midst of a major flu outbreak.

I was listening to the Adam Carolla Podcast when he had on people affiliated with the Raw Food movement. At no point did anyone call in or did Adam question what they said, so I'm sure it was understood to be fact by many. They referred to cheese as being horrible for you and attributed what bordered on special powers for eating raw nuts and veggies. At one point one of the people, in talking about the time before he went raw, said that the lettuce was probably the only thing that was keeping him alive. Does anyone else realize how insane that is? He's making it up as he goes along!

Liz Vaccariello, editor in chief for Prevention magazine put out what is truly one of the most jaw-droppingly ignorant articles I think I have ever read. @LizVacc as she's known on twitter, put out an article called, 'The 7 foods experts won't eat'. She listed the bad food, then the 'expert' that knew better than eating that food. See if you can detect a pattern here...

Canned tomatoes
"The expert: Fredrick vom Saal, PhD, an endocrinologist at the University of Missouri who studies bisphenol-A

The problem: The resin linings of tin cans contain bisphenol-A, a synthetic estrogen that has been linked to ailments ranging from reproductive problems to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Unfortunately, acidity (a prominent characteristic of tomatoes) causes BPA to leach into your food. Studies show that the BPA in most people's body exceeds the amount that suppresses sperm production or causes chromosomal damage to the eggs of animals. "You can get 50 mcg of BPA per liter out of a tomato can, and that's a level that is going to impact people, particularly the young," says vom Saal. "I won't go near canned tomatoes.""

This seems somewhat legit until you start to wonder:

Is 50mcg the upper limit (theoretically possible)? If so, how much leaching actually occurs? Is it 50 mcg or is it 50mcg/kg bodyweight? Big difference.

This is from [ http://www.bisphenol-a.org/about/faq.html#i ]

'Government and industry researchers have reported that bisphenol A (BPA) is generally not detected in canned beverages and only extremely low levels (generally less than 37 parts per billion) of BPA have been reported to migrate into some canned foods. At these levels, a consumer would have to ingest more than 500 pounds of canned food and beverages every day for an entire lifetime to exceed the safe level of BPA set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Consequently, human exposure to BPA from can coatings is minimal and poses no known health risk.'

Since that site is pro BPA, I'll site another source:
[ http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/Quality-Safety/Industry-backs-bisphenol-A-safety-in-can-linings ]

'The Consumer Union published its report after tests on 19 canned foods - including soups, juice, tuna, and green beans – found almost all contained “measurable levels of BPA”. The levels of chemical detected ranged from 0.3 parts per billion (ppb) to 191ppb. This highest level was detected in canned Del Monte Fresh Cut Green Beans Blue Lake with the lowest finding for this product less than a fifth of that at 35.9 ppb. Progresso Vegetable Soup, made by General Mills, showed a BPA level ranging from 67 to 134 ppb, while Campbell’s Condensed Chicken Noodle Soup had BPA levels between 54.5- 102 ppb, said the study.

A spokesman from General Mills said the BPA levels of up to 134ppb reportedly found in its Progresso Soup were not consistent with the company’s own findings.

“However, even if that level was present, it would still be substantially below the advisory level of 600 parts per billion established by the European Union as a level of safe consumption for all ages – and below current U.S. guidelines that establish the daily upper limit of safe exposure as 50 micrograms per kilogram of body weight,” he added. “A level of 60 or 90 parts per billion, if present in a product, is and would be safe.”'

I know this is true from how they phrased it. You see, all @LizVacc reported on was an out of context number - 50mcg, but that isn't how toxicity is displayed. Tox levels for any food additive is always listed as units per kilogram of bodyweight. The reason for this is because of lab testing on rats and they need to convert the number into a human equivalent. So when the biased bisphenol-a site said that you would need to ingest 500 lbs of it every day for a lifetime, I knew they weren't lying.

I did find something amusing when looking that up...

Check out this section of a story done by the Virginian-Pilot and reposted by [ http://www.ewg.org/node/27610 ]

'the best option is to look for tomato products in glass jars, such as those made by Bionaturae, or in aseptic packaging, such as Pomi brand.'

Now compare that with what Liz Vaccariello wrote:

'Choose tomatoes in glass bottles (which do not need resin linings), such as the brands Bionaturae and Coluccio. You can also get several types in Tetra Pak boxes, like Trader Joe's and Pomi.'

Plagiarize much, Editor in Chief?

More examples:

Nonorganic potatoes (her wording, not mine)

'The expert: Jeffrey Moyer, chair of the National Organic Standards Board'

Really? You mean to tell me that the Chairman of the National Organics Standards Board is advocating for organic potatoes? You just blew my mind. Hey, I wonder if salt is good for me, maybe I'll ask the head of Morton Salt.

The Illusion of Fact.

Question what you are being told and why they are telling you. Use reason and logic. Autism is caused by vaccines and food dye? Wouldn't there by way more people with autism? I mean, everyone has had either an M&M or a shot?

I blame the food industry, and IFT, and our educational system. The industry should have seen this coming and should have reached out to educate. The Institute of Food Technologists could do more to educate our public so they don't turn to food hysterics and junk science. We eat every day, several times a day. Why isn't basic food science taught as real world examples of physics, agriculture, chemistry, and biology?

I have promised and I will do a thorough fact checking of Food Inc. I put it off because I know it's going to be a ton of work (not debunking, but a ton of writing because there is so much to debunk). I might break it down to a couple of fact checks per post. I dread doing it like I used to dread track conditioning in high school. I got so much anxiety that I would feel physically ill. I hated running and no amount of running gave me more stamina. I was a shot put and discus thrower, too, so running was extra pointless for me. Oh well, another story for a different blog all together.

Look for me on Twitter - @samvance

Comment on here as well. I get the comments in my gmail and approve them so I don't have crazies leave crazy comments. Plus it forces me to read the comments. Let me know if you like it and tell your friends/colleagues.

The Issue 2 of getting a job at KFC.

2009-10-29T12:36:00.003-04:00

Hello world. It's been a while and now I'm back to deliver another passionate missive about the food industry as well as a thing or two about the restaurant industry.

I have no theme today, so it will be a hodgepodge of short topics. Be sure to comment if you have one and please spread the word. I know that some of you have read every post but just think of how many that haven't read one.

Visited the Boston Market at 9430 Fields Ertel Rd in Mason, OH yesterday. As a long time KFC employee, I'm disappointed to say that they not only have their act together, but they are running a better restaurant than KFC. This couldn't have been better evidenced than the $1 meal online coupon promotion they have out thru the 2nd of November. Lines formed to the door and nobody panicked...they were ready. Their hotwells were filled with hot food that looked appetizing and not all mashed to hell. Behind the employees were whole chickens roasting slowly in a series of rotisserie ovens. One cashier took every order, one person scooped sides, and one person added chicken and finished out the order. The manager kept the birds flying out of the oven and I'm sure there was one more prep person out of site, working the side dish prep in the back. It was fast, it was efficient, it was delicious. You have the choice of a quarter white meat chicken or 3 pieces of dark, one side, and cornbread.

This online coupon was a response to KFC's do-over of the failed Oprah Coupon several months back. The redo was less spectacular. This time you got one free piece of grilled chicken, which I later heard was a choice of either a leg or wing. A wing, really? Aren't you trying to win over some business, KFC? I'm sure there were some product outages all across the nation.

KFC has strayed a little bit from the things that made us such a strong growing chain in the late 90's - early 2000's. It should be all about the chicken, first of all. Focus on getting the basics right. That means more rounds of smaller batches being cooked. It means focusing on Original, Extra Crispy, Grilled, and Crispy Strips. I would cut out the new Original Strips as well as Popcorn chicken. Original Strips are a great idea, but carry over too much flavor of the trans fat free fry oil, which breaks down faster than hydrogenated shortening. So those strip will pick up the slightest bitter compunds released as the oil ages. Popcorn is popular but very labor intensive. It doesn't hold well, it fries too fast so the cook has to stop what he/she is doing and babysit it while it cooks, and it uses a lot of flour. The sides would be limited to Mashed Potatoes, Gravy, Green Beans, BBQ Baked Beans, Mac n' Cheese, and Cole Slaw. Bread choices would remain as biscuits and cornbread muffins. I would also lower prices and structure the labor so that the manager is free to...manage and not be a highly paid worker. The manager needs to be free to hop station to station to help out in quick spurts, monitor quality, and check food safety. Locations with management that does this will have lower food costs and lower waste. You also empower your employees by not bailing them out every time they seem to be lagging behind.

If KFC wants anymore ideas, they can email me with a job offer and salary.

Speaking of job offers, I am still trying to get my meat hooks on a great food industry career position. One of the reasons I started this blog was to stay sharp and current with the industry. I have a degree in this field and I can do anything from R&D to Management to Sales. I know that it can take time to find the right position but I will be out of college for 2 years this December. So if any of you industry leaders that quietly read this blog need anyone good...don't pass me up.

The job ads are as frustrating as the silence that follows my application. I saw one looking for a 3rd shift production supervisor in a remote part of the state. In the requirements, they ask for 5 years of manufacturing experience. Here is how my brain works: why would someone with 5 years of experience still be on 3rd shift? Aren't you immediately disregarding fresh talent while attracting candidates for supervisor that couldn't get promoted past 3rd shift? Food companies do this all the time in job ads. I saw one for sales and they wanted 10 years of experience and a working relationship with several grocers. Are you dead serious? If I'm being interviewed for a sales job and they ask where I see myself in just 5 years, the answer sure as hell isn't going to be, 'right here in the same position'.

Part of this problem stems from a lack of a formal training program. The large entities with such a program skim graduates with 3.0 GPA's and higher. My GPA was lower, but it had nothing to do with my area of expertise. It had everything to do with what we call, 'General Education Credits'. I had a few of those classes I had to repeat, which crucified my GPA. In food science classes that pertained to my degree it was nearly all A's and B's. Unfortunately, my resume won't even get considered by many companies because of GPA.

In the last couple months, I had a president of a food company personally refer me to someone in their HR dept for a management position that he believed needed to be filled and I was also referred by a sales exec for his food company that needed to replace an outgoing sales position and got paid for his referrals. I have heard back from neither.

I have finally gotten around to checking out Ohio's Issue 2. I didn't judge, because I hadn't done any research into it. I just pulled up some info from both sides and read. The pro side of the argument advocated for livestock raising standards, traceability programs, and the general well being of our protein supply. The against side claimed a hijacking of Ohio's constitution by big business and included several food hysteric's buzzwords such as, 'Sustainability' and 'Organic' and 'Factory Farms'.

I followed the hyperbole and deducted that the food hysterics have grown even more paranoid.

The truth:
Both sides want standards set in the raising of livestock. There are some bad seeds out there that give real herdsman a bad name. Whether it's hogs, steer, dairy cattle, or sheep, 99% plus of them care for their animals and their general well being.

The HSUS are not advocates, but rather, activists. Big difference. As activists they have an emotional attachment to the animals but lack the experience and education to make decisions on their behalf. The standards you would get from the HSUS side would go beyond overkill. Many animals are social and stick close together, while HSUS standards may result in in requiring more acreage per head than the animal will ever freely use.

If issue 2 is voted down then something may or may not happen. HSUS will try to get the regulation they, as activists, feel is necessary passed into law. If they don't succeed then things will stay the same except for any programs that the producers may put through to raise standards for animal care. If HSUS is successful in passing their own legislation, you could see a mass exodus of agriculture into neighboring states where it can be more profitable.

If Issues 2 passes, will we see a massive de-regulation of agribusiness? No. It's in the farmers best interest to keep standards at a level that keeps those bad seeds in check and presents a socially responsible attitude to the consumers. I think I'll vote Yes on Issue 2, and so should you.

If you like what you read or think other will, please pass the link to this blog along in emails, facebook status', and Tweets. Thanks.

Center for Misleading Lists in the Public Food Hysteria.

2009-10-09T00:05:00.005-04:00

About 40 years ago, a couple things happened. First, people were convinced that end times were near as people were predicting major food shortages and famine. Second, people were becoming concerned with the environment.

Both things weren't at all baseless. India had a booming population as was Africa's. It was the work of Norman Borlaug and the green revolution that saved the day, and an estimated 1 - 2 billion people. Since the industrial revolution just 70 years prior, smog and industrial pollutants were also a genuine concern.

About this time, many watchdog groups were formed, as was the EPA. While the intent of most of these groups was to curb environmental abuses and encourage responsible regulation, most have now become institutions full of people that must justify their own existence. It was a perfect storm of junk science, political power, and a generally undereducated public that lead to groups such as The Center for Science in the Public Interest to take hold and grow.

In car sales, there is a saying; 'The person that talks the most, wins'. This could be their strategy as well.

'You don't know about this? Well, let me tell you all about it.'

By the time they are done pumping you full of 'information', they have one more voice in a grossly misinformed game of telephone.

'We don't know enough about irradiated meat, more studies are needed.'
'Did you hear about the studies done on irradiated meat?'
'Studies show irradiated meat to be bad.'
'Everyone knows that irradiated meat is bad.'

They make lists that I hate using very narrow criteria or flawed logic. They condemn certain foods that are high in calories as being bad for you, yet they never list the vitamin and mineral content or protein, just calories and sodium. Of course, nobody is going to publicly say that more calories and more sodium are good for you, so they get a pass. It takes too long to explain that calories and sodium aren't intrinsically bad or good. Both things are necessary, too much can lead to long term health issues, and one or two meals a week that are high in either aren't going to kill you. What looks better on Yahoo's front page? Of course, we now get flooded with these web stories of the worst foods, all based on calories alone. It's nonsense.

Here is The Center for Science in the Public Interest's latest list, based on food illness:
The 10 most dangerous foods.
1. Leafy Greens
2. Eggs
3. Tuna
4. Oysters
5. Potatoes
6. Cheese
7. Ice Cream
8. Tomatoes
9. Sprouts
10. Berries

These numbers are based on CDC reporting data from people believed to have been victims of food poisoning. There are several problems here that you'll hear nobody else address.

1. The data.
Did they only pull CDC's numbers that were a result of major outbreaks, or was this also when someone thought they had bad fish? Witness testimony isn't exactly reliable, either. Most people get what my animal science instructor called 'the 24 hour Montezuma's' and blame the last thing they ate. It seems logical until you realize that our digestive tracts take 8 - 12 hours or more to completely digest and excrete food. Diarrhea can't be caused by something you just ate. Also, people can be biased against certain foods or even certain restaurants where they may have gotten bad service.

2. Specific ingredients.
Only data from major outbreaks can be traced back to a specific food. An individual with the help of a whole team of doctors couldn't derive the poison food culprit unless they had a sample of every food they ate in the previous 2 days. For instance, I had chicken(no meat on this list...interesting), cheese, potatoes, and ranch dressing(contains eggs) today. According to this list, I died 4 hours ago.

3. An unloaded gun never killed anyone.
Preparation is a critical control point in safe food preparation. I'll use spinach as an example. Yes, deer, rabbits, and migrant farm workers without access to toilets have probably peed on at least some of the spinach. That spinach is not doomed to be contaminated when you pick it up at the store, however. The spinach is washed and rinsed in at least 2 steps, sealed in airtight packaging, stored in a temperature controlled warehouse, shipped in refrigerated trucks, shelved in a cold environment, and brought home for you to cross contaminate with the raw chicken you were just cutting. Good job. Even if the spinach was contaminated in the field, the wash/rinse steps should eliminate any pathogens. Dole cannot be responsible for your food prep techniques or your temperature abuse.

A fair list:
Instead of looking at food that went wrong, it is probably better to look at food that have the highest concentrations of micro organisms to begin with. Then we can build a list based on the worst case scenario of food safety and sanitation.

1. Sprouts.
Sorry hippies, but at around 7 - 9 log Colony forming units(cfu)/g(gram)/cc(cubic centimeter), sprouts are the most germ riddled produce out there. What makes this the most dangerous is the fact that there isn't much processing that can be done due to their fragility.
2. Greens

3. Berries

4. Onions

5. Potatoes

- a note about eggs. In the stories I read about this list, eggs are placed in there rather nonchalantly, as if we can all agree that eggs are nasty.

'What about salmonella?'

Assuming you eat cooked eggs, this shouldn't be an issue. Now, let's assume you are making a dressing or a meringue, now what? Salmonella occurs in eggs at a rate of about 1 in 20,000. Chances are, you'll be fine.

A final note about calories/sodium.

Sodium works opposite potassium to regulate inter and extracellular fluids. Too much sodium is as bad as no sodium. Yes, pay attention, but do not shoot for zero.

Calories should be looked at as a currency of the foods we eat. The amount of calories in our banks depends on the weight, musculature, and physical activity we are trying to support. If you weight train, run for distance, or have a high metabolism, then you will need more calories. For instance, Michael Phelps consumed 12,000 calories a day while at the height of his olympic training. On the other hand, a 185 lb man with normal musculature, living an inactive lifestyle, need only consume 2,220 calories per day.

Use calories like money. Go ahead pend 2,000 on those cheese fries(Outback's are fantastic), just short yourself some calories for the next couple days or so to stay within budget. Too many calories consumed - you blew your budget and you'll gain. Too few calories consumed - you are a tight wad and you'll lose weight.

Do not, I repeat, do not try to get to zero with calories. That will lead to eating disorders, body dimorphic disorder, and eventually organ failure.

Hooters - The C Student Of Restaurant Chains.

2009-09-18T20:32:00.005-04:00

Oh, Hooters. The concept is pretty solid, use something guys love to sell them other things that they love. Hot girls in tight outfits and nice cleavage bringing you beer and wings while you watch sports.

This concept was red hot in the late 80's/early 90's. The news would often have a piece on how the community disapproves of the Hooter girls and woman's groups cried misogynist, saying the women were being objectified. What we see now is a place trying to cling to it's former glory while slipping in many key areas that leave the chain vulnerable to food safety, quality, and service issues. Hooters can make an A, but prefers to rest on it's laurels.

First off, let's get the uniforms out of the way. I hear an argument for the uniform, citing it's tackiness as a part of the concept. If tacky is what you aim for, why not hire sloppy, dejected Wal-Mart patrons and put them in high heels? No, you put them in the uniform because it was pretty hot and racy at the time and it turned heads and garnered press coverage. The trouble now is that our culture has caught up with Hooters in terms of sleaze. High school sophomores now wear more offensive outfits during the summer than what you see in Hooters. The Hooters uniform was a solid 8 or 9 on the skank meter, but through the passage of time, that same outfit is a 4 at best.

My solution goes in one of a couple different ways. First is to stop trying to be racy. Listen Hooters, men can now get porn instantly on their computer or text to their phones. We are no longer seeing anything special and we're desensitized to it. So one solution would be wearing Hooters t-shirts or polos and nice shorts. This would not only reduce the obvious fire hazard, but it will make the waitresses, 'the girls next door' you claim they are. The other solution would be to play to the sports theme. Make Hooters jerseys for football basketball, baseball, and hockey. Hell, you could even do a UFC style design. Make the color scheme highly customizable to the area. In Columbus, the 'OO' in Hooters could be OSU themed block O's and the colors could be scarlet and gray. In Cincinnati, the colors could be red/black.

OK, enough of the Project Runway crap.

Operations in the back of the house leave much to be desired. We have issues that make the food less appealing, less tasty, and less safe.

The food prep and plating is done in plain sight of the bar. I have no problem with this, but you really need your A-game to avoid looking dirty. That goes for both the employees and the actual kitchen. I see employees frequently wear their own personal hats that are cocked to the side, pants sagging, and a non work shirt. It isn't cool, and you can give a laid back vibe through chatter with the bar patrons without looking like total douche-bags.

The kitchen is rarely clean. Flour, sauce, shortening, and crumbs make their way all over the prep surfaces. Cross contamination is commonplace in any Hooters I have ever visited and sat at the bar. One time, I was in the Hooters on Dublin-Granville Rd in Columbus and saw a guy carrying raw wings in a tub. The cook lifted the tub to shoulder height and carried it over the prep table as juices from the wings dripped over people's plates. I have seen cooks wearing vinyl food prep gloves, but sweating to the point that the sweat from their arm ran down to the elbow or wrist and dripped onto the prep table. I've seen cooks working with just one glove because the other one had flour on it and they didn't stop and wash their hands. Then, I have seen flagrant cross contamination when people with floured arms and gloved hands takes off their gloves and handles plates of food with their sweaty hands and the arms were still full of flour. I've seen the cook with the sag in his pants stop, pull up his pants, text on his phone, and continue plating someone's food without ever taking off his gloves and washing his hands. I've also seen managers helping out, but without proper hair restraints which, by this point in the story, seems kinda unimportant.

It isn't just the way in which the employees interact with the food that causes food safety issues, but how the food is situated and prepped. The sauces that Hooters uses is poured into stainless steel round inset pans, ladled into mixing bowls with the chicken/shrimp, tossed together, then poured out onto the plate. The sauces are not refrigerated while being used, which isn't a big deal in and of itself because the sauce has a high enough acidity and low enough free water to keep out most micro organisms. The problem is the sauce that languishes in the mixing bowl with the breading from the wings, juices from the meat, and oil from the fryer. This is a potential breeding ground for a massive amount of M.O. All it takes is one under cooked shrimp or errant droplet of sweat and the bacteria will spread like wildfire.

The toppings and pickles used are not refrigerated either. Sandwich toppings are stored in pans, that are set in ice baths. This is ok for short periods, but is far from acceptable as a means to control the temperature. First off, the ice melts because it's 88 degrees in that kitchen area. Second, the ice water only cools the submerged part of the pan, and not very well. Many times I see plastic pans used for the lettuce/onions/tomatoes. Plastic is not a good conductor of heat, therefore not as much cold gets to the product.

Then there are the quality issues...

The food isn't that bad, but the cooks aren't doing it any favors. Wings routinely sit in the fry basket, above the fryer for several minutes, or they'll do the move where they re-fry it for 10 seconds to heat it up... just long enough for the shortening to soak through the breading. The other extreme is when they don't give the wings any time to drain off excess shortening and it gets tossed with, and emulsified into, the sauce. When the wings are sauced, they have the remains of whatever was tossed before, as we already discussed. When you get your wings, you have all of these tag along crumbs going for the ride. It makes the food seems heavy and oily. Also, stop acting like it's a big deal to not get fixins, beans or a pickle on my sandwich plate. The juice from the pickle soaks into the bun and it's all a waste anyway, all because the hooter girl didn't assert herself and makes sure the food is as ordered before bringing it over.

The service isn't great, but it's slightly better than the sanitation. Servers at Hooters are encouraged to entertain and mingle which my brain hears and converts to flirting. It's great if you are the one getting all the attention, but chances are, you're not. The people they are hanging out with are regulars that they probably give free fries to or refill a beer without charging. Meanwhile, new customers get to sit and wait till the girls are done before they get to order. This can lead to long waits to just order a drink. Plus, the girl just wasted all her spunk and mojo on the 48 yr old construction foreman that reminds her of daddy that ran off when she was 10 and thus, is very short with you.

So what to do...? I already put in my 2 cents on the uniforms, but here is the rest.

Cook staff:
Gloves are mandatory while handling raw food.
When going from raw to cooked/ready to eat, hands must be washed and dried thoroughly.
Hats. Hooters logo. Bill must be forward facing.
Any personnel working in the kitchen must wear a hat.
No sagging pants.
Hooters shirt only.
No cigarette behind the ear (yes, I really saw this).
Apron must be changed when soiled.
No cell use while handling food.

Kitchen:
There must be some degree of separation between the breading area/fryline and where cooked food is plated.
The kitchen must be cleaned, swept, and mopped after every rush.
Coldwells for fixins and maybe a closed off system for the sauce(squeeze bottle, pump) is mandatory.
Bowls must be swapped out for clean every 15 minutes, no exceptions.
All fryers must have timers with buttons programmed to add 30 seconds of drain time after the initial product timer goes off.
Fryed product must either be used immediately or transported to a 160 degree holding cabinet and marked with the appropriate hold time

Service:
Hooter girls must check food before taking it to the customer. Incorrect orders that reach the customer are complimentary.
No boyfriend/girlfriends hanging out without purchasing food.
Hooter girls have 1 minute to greet a sitting customer and 2 minutes after that to bring their drink order.
At least 2 call backs are required after the entree is served.
All customers deserve an equal amount of service and attention.

Implementing these changes would at least make Hooters relevant and an A student.

If anyone else wants me to tell them how to run their business... I'll listen to any reasonable job offers.

You're welcome.

Cross Pollanation

2009-09-11T20:40:00.004-04:00

Let's say that you were on a strict allowance. Instead of getting a certain amount per week, however, you get a daily allowance.

Let's say you are allowed $100 a day, every day. Now if you spend less than that, you will have saved money, but you will go into debt if you spend more. This means that you owe someone money. You must now underspend by that amount over a certain period of time to pay that debt.

This is how the relationship we have with calories works. Food and drink is the delivery method for those calories. In that scenario, imagine that you start overspending by a lot... what do you do? Do you ban quarters because they account for 25% of every dollar? Do you ban pennies because they are so ubiquitous that they must be to blame for the debt you face? No. Those solutions would be ridiculous.

Why then, do we do this with food? If someone consistently over-consumes by 500 calories a day, is a ban or tax on pop the solution? Isn't the problem, too many calories? This issue ties in with what the conservatives call, personal responsibility. Food Hysterics like journalist, Michael Pollan seem concerned with what is being done to the American people. People like him think that old white men in suits are conspiring to get us to eat more. He recently wrote an Op-Ed for the New York Times linking health care reform with the food industry. I linked the title of this blog to that article and will be referencing it throughout this post.

"That’s why our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry."

Exercise and eating the proper number of calories will bring health costs down, not stopping the food industry from making food. How can the food industry stop people from overeating? Has anyone thought about how insane this sounds? Here is some more conspiracy talk...

"There’s lots of money to be made selling fast food and then treating the diseases that fast food causes. One of the leading products of the American food industry has become patients for the American health care industry."

Fast food causes disease? I can only assume he can be referring to type 2 diabetes and heart disease linked, in part, to high cholesterol. Fat. However, he doesn't qualify that statement by associating any amount to the fast food. The way he makes the statement, it's as if any fast food will lead to disease. He is a professor of journalism, so perhaps it isn't a mistake that he wrote it this way. Perhaps he wants people to stop eating anything he calls fast food and has twisted the science on this until it becomes a lie. Fast food does not cause disease, too many calories and calories from fat, and cholesterol can lead to some diseases. He does more calculus with the english language here...

"Not all of these diseases are linked to diet — there’s smoking, for instance — but many, if not most, of them are."

He places in your mind the notion that all diseases not linked to smoking are linked to diet. Of course, he only lists smoking as a 'for instance', but the way he structures his sentence starts off by conceding a little, then placing only one non-diet related disease, then going from many to most. All the reader is left with is disease = diet, except for smoking. I don't think I'm being hard on Michael Pollan, and I don't think he wrote in this way as an accident. Keep in mind that he teaches writing for a living.

"To put it more bluntly, the government is putting itself in the uncomfortable position of subsidizing both the costs of treating Type 2 diabetes and the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup."

This is the old HFCS myth, a favorite of foodies, Whole Foods Liberals, Food Hysterics, etc, etc, etc. Whatever you want to call them. They blame HFCS for obesity as well as diabetes. One study in 2007 hypothesized that pop with HFCS contained more potentially reactive carbonyls than simple sugar did. This study has been challenged, however, and you never close the case on an issue with one study.

"AGRIBUSINESS dominates the agriculture committees of Congress, and has swatted away most efforts at reform."

Of course agribusiness is going to be active in the Agriculture committees. This was, quite possibly, the dumbest sentence I have ever read. The ag talk continues...

"But what happens when the health insurance industry realizes that our system of farm subsidies makes junk food cheap, and fresh produce dear, and thus contributes to obesity and Type 2 diabetes?"

What a huge leap in logic...right off the intellectual cliff. Farm subsidies prop up the prices of things like corn and soybeans, which make them more expensive to the food industry. Does Pollan think that the food industry is included in the farm bill?

"...and in time the industry would come to see that the development of regional food systems, which make fresh produce more available and reduce dependence on heavily processed food..."

Perhaps the most important sentence, because it reveals where all of these food hysteric mantras are coming from. Ready?

Misinformation, panic, and ignorance breed more of the same. Good people are misled into thinking we have this huge problem and start investing much time and resources into solving it. The problem is that their solutions are based on myth and non-problems and non-science. They can't turn off what they've started, because what they've started has become it's own institution. Now there are people getting paid based on these assumptions.

I'll list some ideas and how they all come together.
Local food.
Organic.
Minimally processed.
Vegetarian.
Anti-GMO.

The only thing I listed that has any sense to it is the idea of sourcing foodstuffs locally. This will cut pollution associated with transporting food across the country. Aside from that, the Hysterics claim that locally grown is healthier, the same claim made for organic. Both of these things generally involve small scale operations. Hmm, watch a pattern emerge, here. Minimally processed or food that hasn't been processed at some factory because it has to be bad, right? Vegetarian, because cows have feelings too, and meat has to be bad because the big corporate giant processes the meat and owns the farms... right? Just say no to GMO's, because the big businesses develop those so they can make big money and we'll probably grow an extra eyeball.....right? Hello? Don't you get it?

It all starts to revolve around this idea of a huge evil corporations. If a report came out tomorrow about how organic food contains high traces of fecal material and e. coli, would these Food Hysterics be up in arms? I guess it depends on the size of the company growing the organic food.

Michael Pollan and those like him are all victims of a vicious cycle that starts with misinformation and a hatred of corporations, and ends with a need to justify their existence. In that justification, they mislead others and their numbers grow. The public sees this as a consensus of public opinion and starts to ignore facts. Facts are important. Facts, as it turns out, are not democratic. I don't care if 5.5 billion people feel the way Michael Pollan does, if the facts are not on his side, he is still wrong. In the meantime, the web grows and the Food Hysterics Cross Pollanate with one another.