Sunday, December 9, 2007

vegetable orchestra

Wow! The Vegetable Orchestra performs on instruments made of fresh vegetables. It was founded in 1998 and is based out of Vienna.



According to the website, at the conclusion of each performance, the audience is offered bowl of vegetable soup.

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Saturday, December 8, 2007

oxford word of the year: locavore

Well, the New Oxford American Dictionary recently announced its "Word of the Year."

Ready?

It's "locavore."

A "locavore" buys food from farmers’ markets or grows the food him- or herself. This is partially because locavores claim local food tastes better and is healthier, but also to avoid the environmental costs of shipping food over long distances.

“The word ‘locavore’ shows how food-lovers can enjoy what they eat while still appreciating the impact they have on the environment,” said Ben Zimmer, editor for American dictionaries at Oxford University Press. “It’s significant in that it brings together eating and ecology in a new way.”

“Locavore” was coined two years ago by a group of four women in San Francisco who proposed that local residents should try to eat only food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius.
(I recently ate at a San Francisco restaurant, Fish and Farm, which focuses on sustainable and organic food. Fish and Farm grows all its own herbs and its produce is organic and sourced within a 100-mile radius. Also, whenever possible, so are their meats. )

This is especially interesting for me, since I just finished reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, published in May of this year. A combination of this book and living in California with locavore roommates has ignited my interest in local and seasonal food. The book itself chronicles one family's experience as they move to Appalachia to experiment with eating locally for one year. I found myself laughing at their adventures with squash surplus and turkey sex. But more importantly, I found myself thinking about food seasonally and considering the environmental effects of having bananas in December. (Many people want carbon cost labeling on food products.) Most surprisingly, I found myself trying out the recipes at the end of each chapter. And, I ate a persimmon (seasonal in November) for the first time in my life.

Interestingly enough, 2006's Word of the Year was similarly environmentally-themed: carbon-neutral.

Being carbon neutral involves calculating your total climate-damaging carbon emissions, reducing them where possible, and then balancing your remaining emissions, often by purchasing a carbon offset: paying to plant new trees or investing in “green” technologies such as solar and wind power.

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Saturday, October 13, 2007

sign: shoplifters will be composted

Only in California...

This sign was nestled in the boxes of dates at the Farmer's Market one Saturday morning.

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Monday, August 6, 2007

mccarrots taste better?

Now, you may have already heard this one on the news, but it's pretty incredible. The August issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine published an article demonstrating the power of advertising to small children. (You can read more about this study in Forbes or the Associated Press)
By the early age of 3 to 5 years, low-income preschool children preferred the tastes of foods and drinks if they thought they were from McDonald’s, demonstrating that brand identity can influence young children's taste perceptions. - Pediatr Adolesc Med.

I was a little surprised the
San Mateo County, CA experiment was limited to low-income kids, but the study author, Dr. Tom Robinson, allegedly believes the results would be similar for children from wealthier families.

Five foods were tested. The chicken nuggets, hamburger and french fries were all from McDonald's; the carrots and milk were from a grocery store. Kids sat behind a white screen, and were handed two identical samples of food, one coming out of a plain paper bag, wrapped in plain paper, while the other came out of a McDonald's bag, wrapped in similarily-labeled paper. If kids did not immediately recognize the symbol (around 25% of the time), a researcher would tell them which one was from McDonald's.

The independent variable in this case was the packaging for the food, while the dependent variable was the kid's preference of food. (Kids also had the option of saying the two samples tasted the same.) The researchers made great efforts to control their experiment,
I recommend reading the methods section of the study to read the details. In fact, the whole study is pretty intense. For such a simple-sounding experiment, there is still a lot of serious scientific method involved. The write-up includes statements such as, "The 63 children performed a total of 304 individual tasting comparisons. Three, 2, 3, 1, and 1 child were not allowed to eat hamburger, chicken nuggets, french fries, milk, and carrots, respectively, and 1 child was unable to bite the carrots. "

The results?
  • 77 percent said the labeled fries tasted best while only 13 percent preferred the others
  • 54 percent preferred McDonald’s-wrapped carrots versus 23 percent who liked the plain-wrapped sample
  • The only results that were not overwhelmingly clear involved the hamburgers, with 29 kids choosing McDonald’s-wrapped burgers and 22 choosing the unmarked ones.
  • Less than 25% of the children said both samples of all foods tasted the same.
As with any science experiment, the results inspire more questions and opportunities for further experimentation. Pradeep Chintagunta, a University of Chicago marketing professor, makes an excellent point when he said a more fair comparison might have compared kids’ preferences for the McDonald’s label versus another familiar brand, such as Mickey Mouse. It would be interesting to see if it is specifically the lure of McDonalds, or the power of any advertising that yields these results. And of course, I would be interested in the author's presumption that the results would be similar with middle- to upper-class children. Would early exposure to Whole Foods and fine dining make a kid less susceptible to McDonald's advertising?

Finally, the whole things makes me consider the power of advertising in older kids (and adults). All I have to do is consider fads like Ugg boots....

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Sunday, June 17, 2007

what the world eats

Speaking of food, there is an amazing photo gallery from Time Magazine. (It is based of a book called Hungry Planet.) Each of the 15 photos show family members standing around the food that would make up a series of typical meals for the week, plus the weekly cost and a list of their favorite foods.

Not surprisingly, the most processed food surrounds... you guessed it. The American families. This is even more intriguing to me as I am currently reading An Omnivore's Dilemma. This book discusses the food processing that I (and many Americans) seldom consider. (For instance, did you know there are 38 ingredients required to make a Chicken McNugget?!) If you are not so interested in reading the entire book, you could check out the article author Michael Pollan wrote in the New York Times. Some of his advice includes:

Eat food. Though in our current state of confusion, this is much easier said than done. So try this: Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. (Sorry, but at this point Moms are as confused as the rest of us, which is why we have to go back a couple of generations, to a time before the advent of modern food products.) There are a great many foodlike items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food (Go-Gurt? Breakfast-cereal bars? Nondairy creamer?); stay away from these.

Especially avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable c) more than five in number — or that contain high-fructose corn syrup.None of these characteristics are necessarily harmful in and of themselves, but all of them are reliable markers for foods that have been highly processed.

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Saturday, June 9, 2007

food hacking

What happens when the world's leading hacker chefs skill up on organic chemistry and buy centrifuges for their kitchens? Is your palate ready for "meat glue", "cooking" with liquid nitrogen, and "liquid noodles"? ... [this] looks at the growing role of science in fine dining kitchens with examples from the restaurants that are inventing the exciting field of molecular gastronomy. (Dorkbot)
I am a terrible cook, and usually consume food I can carry in one hand (apple, bagel, rice cake). However, my interest in food preparation was piqued when I read about food hacking! This trend, popularized by scientifically-minded chefs, is based on the principle of "creat[ing] dishes based on the molecular compatibilities of foods." For example, a food hacker might combine chocolate and oysters (!) due to the similarities in their molecular make-up.

Marc Powell, a San Francisco-based hacker chef, is well known in the field of "molecular gastronomy." His website (foodhacking.com) established a food hacking wiki in June of 2006, where fellow food hackers can go to share ideas and "Experiments/recipes." Many of the recipes require unusual tools such as a nitrous oxide siphon or a centrifuge. Other recipes require exotic chemicals, like "meat-glue" which can combine chicken and beef into a single slab of meat referred to as "chick-a-beef."

Martin Lersch, from Oslo, Norway, holds a PhD within the field of organometallic chemistry and maintains a blog about molecular gastronomy and the connections between science and cooking.

Here in Chicago, interested parties can experience molecular gastronomy bliss at Moto (google map).
You don't just eat chef Homaro Cantu's food. You gape in disbelief as you are instructed in how to handle his offbeat creations with even more peculiar utensils: The whole thinking is like a three-star science lab. (from one of many reviews of the restaurant)
I experienced the 10 course meal there recently. The meal began with an tasty edible menu nestled on top of a micro-salad. I don't want to give away all the good parts, but let's just say the meal included lasers, liquid nitrogen, and dehydrated macaroni. It was an (albeit pricey) experience I would enthusiastic recommend.

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Thursday, December 28, 2006

banana bunker

There is a market for everything. Including a protective case for your banana.

Uh oh. Competition. Check out the Banana Guard. It's good to have choices.

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