Sorry, Sugar

I was in the checkout line at the grocery store yesterday and overheard a fascinating conversation.  It was between a mother and 4ish-year old daughter.  Apparently, the candy and such that is displayed conveniently close to the cash register had caught the eye of the little girl, who in turn caught a pack of gum in her little fist and added it to the groceries on the conveyor belt.  What captured my attention was when Mom said, “No, you can’t have that gum; it has sugar in it.”

Great idea, I thought.  What child needs more sugar?  I then stole a glance at the products Mom was unloading from her cart.  Many had brightly colored packaging with cartoon drawings, meticulously designed to be attractive to the very young.  I saw Captain Crunch berry cereal, containers of flavored yogurts with minced cookies in the lid, a giant bottle of Hershey’s chocolate syrup and several frozen kiddy dinners.  Not a green leaf or piece of fruit in sight.  My first thought was to call the cops and have Mom arrested for child endangerment.  My second thought, somewhat more rational, was to gently point out that what she was buying for her daughter to consume wasn’t really food anyway, and a little extra sugar in the gum was no big deal.

Parents are busy and don’t always have time to think through their purchases and create home cooked meals with whole foods all the time.  Many resort to keeping the kiddos happy with great tasting, highly processed convenience foods.  This makes for a more pleasant evening with less whining but it doesn’t make for a healthy kid.  School teachers and daytime care givers often get the brunt of the processed food side effects via midday sugar crashes, hyper activity and reduced attention span.  There have been many studies where sugar was removed from schools and guess what?  Performance improved, behavior improved and kids were more attentive.

Most people by now know that sugar isn’t the best source of energy for kids (or adults, for that matter.)  Unfortunately, sugar and/or high fructose corn syrup (which is even worse, but we’ll address that at another time) hide in most packaged foods, including the ones that appear to be healthy choices.  Many fruit juices, flavored yogurts, processed cheeses, flavored crackers, granola bars, etc., are merely sugar bombs dressed up to look like food.  Read labels carefully, or better yet, buy foods that don’t have labels.  Fruits and vegetables come to mind.  Your kids’ teachers will thank you, your wallet will thank you, the environment will thank you, and even your kids will thank you – someday.

In the end I didn’t say anything to the mom in the grocery store, I just came home and wrote this missive.  I could have helped them make better food choices – but is it any of my business?  What would you have done?

Another One Bites the Dust

The economy is in the tank, winter produce is getting tiresome, and buying peanut butter is considered a risky venture. And now this? I’ve just read that researchers at Clemson University in South Carolina have debunked the five-second rule. The premise of the five-second rule (I actually go by the ten-second rule which applies to people over 40) is that if food is dropped, a few seconds of floor contact doesn’t make that food less desirable or safe. The Clemson clan discovered that bologna left on a surface contaminated with salmonella for five seconds picked up enough bacteria to make someone sick. I have since reflected on my personal research of the matter over the course of 45 years. I have tested the five- or ten-second rule with chocolate covered raisins, M&Ms, cookies and a variety of other precious foods. These tests were conducted in the controlled environment of my house (in a public place all bets are off.) Although I haven’t tried this with salmonella or bologna (I don’t keep either around the house), I have experienced no ill side effects thus far. I will continue my testing for the next 45 years or so and report any exceptional findings. As for the Clemson researchers, perhaps they can find a better way to spend their grant money then on bologna.

The Skinny on Chefs

I was recently in my local cooking store when I overheard a woman asking about the schedule of cooking classes. In fact, she was asking about one of my cooking classes. In an attempt to be helpful (and add another student to my roster) I piped up and introduced myself as the cooking instructor. She took one look at my 5’ 1” 100 pound frame and blanched. She put down the schedule and said with conviction, “I don’t trust skinny chefs.” And with that, to my astonishment, she turned and left. This is a phrase I’ve heard before, usually followed by a mild chuckle or an “I’ll take my chances” wink from the prospective student. I suppose the adage implies that a skinny chef doesn’t like their own cooking, so why would anyone else? But what about Thomas Keller, Charlie Trotter and Alice Waters? And then there’s Daniel Boulud, Traci des Jardins, Patrick O’Connell and so on. The list of skinny chefs is long and distinguished. People the world over have entrusted their appetites (and their wallets) to food cooked by these skinny masters. I would never be so bold as to put myself in the same category as the chefs listed above, but I know how I stay thin and I must assume they follow a similar practice. I cook mostly from scratch and therefore I eat real food. I know what goes into my meal because I put it there. I use whole, natural ingredients as much as possible and put them together in interesting ways. I eat less because what I eat is satisfying and delicious. Most people who are overweight did not get that way by eating home-cooked meals. More likely a diet of processed foods, soft drinks, fast food and large portion sizes are the culprits of their bulk. Perhaps it is not the skinny chefs one needs to worry about, but the skinny marketing executives from the likes of Frito Lay or Coca Cola. If they’re not consuming their company’s products, why should you?

Fresh or Frozen

I am continually amazed with the ever-expanding selection of frozen dinners available at my grocery store. Gone are the much-anticipated TV dinners in the silver foil trays with individual compartments, having long ago been replaced by ‘gourmet’ offerings with ‘real cheese’ and ‘from scratch’ flavors. Frozen dinners might taste better these days but it’s not because the quality of ingredients has dramatically improved. Instead, it’s the science behind food additives that has improved.

Consider the Joy of Cooking line of frozen foods. This brand is particularly irksome to me because I’ve had the Joy of Cooking cookbook for years and consider the tome a valuable resource for any kitchen. This book was once declared, “the greatest teaching cookbook ever written.” (Back in 1931 when Irma Rombauer and her daughter Marion self-published Joy, they started with the very basic instruction: “Stand facing the stove.”) Marion’s son Ethan is now at the helm and is obviously taking the company in a new direction. Has Ethan thrown in the towel and given up trying to teach people how to cook? Perhaps he is just being pragmatic (and capitalistic) by assuming that people don’t want to learn. If that’s the case, he should consider re-naming the company “The Joy of Not Cooking.”

I digress. Consider Joy’s frozen Bite Size Carrots with Brown Sugar Glaze. The recipe for Glazed Carrots on foodell.com has 3 ingredients (5 if you include salt and pepper): carrots, butter and sugar. This recipe was a staple in the original Joy cookbook and is ever popular with kids and grown-ups alike. The frozen variety of Joy’s glazed carrots includes the same 5 ingredients plus 17 more, including such things as maltodextrin (to sweeten), xanthan gum (to thicken), soy lecithin (to emulsify) and yeast extract (to add flavor). The food scientists have worked hard to adjust the quantities of these processed additives to make Joy’s frozen glazed carrots taste more like homemade.

And to what end? It takes about 10 minutes to cook the frozen carrots and about 20 minutes to make the dish from scratch. The frozen glazed carrots cost roughly $3 more than the homemade dish. Is there joy in paying $3 more to save 10 minutes and ingest chemical compounds? I think Ms. Rombauer would say something like, “Turn and stand facing the stove.”

Sensa-ble Eating

Diet fads come and go. Lately we’ve gone through the Atkins, Acai Berry, 3-Day, Zone, South Beach and Cabbage Soup diets. All of these have a few things in common, those being the lack of sustainability, no long-term health benefits, no regard to exercise, and no requirement to make a fundamental change in your eating habits.

Enter the Sprinkle Diet! It has all of the above features and more! It gives you permission to continue eating all the junk food and bad stuff that made you overweight and/or unhealthy in the first place, AND adds a highly processed, laboratory created sprinkle (or tastant, according to the company) to the already highly processed food that you’re eating. This is the product called Sensa. The Sensa creator is Dr. Hirsch, a neurologist (sounds impressive) who believes that strong flavors and smells send signals to the brain that trigger feelings of being full, or satiety. I agree with this basic theory; delicious food made with whole, natural ingredients eaten in moderation will make you feel more satisfied then a super-sized triple cheeseburger at your local fast food joint. Where Dr. Hirsch and I differ is how you go about getting good, strong flavors from your food. He suggests you just sprinkle a few tastants on whatever crap you happen to be eating and Voila! You eat less of it and therefore you lose weight. He doesn’t address whether the tastants mitigate the risks of heart disease, high cholesterol or diabetes, all of which are present when eating highly processed foods on a regular basis.

So what exactly are Sensa sprinkles? The company describes the ingredients as follows: “Sensa contains Maltodextrin (Derived from Corn from the USA), Tricalcium Phosphate, Silica, Natural and Artificial Flavors, FD&C Yellow 5, and Carmine. Sensa also contains Soy and Milk ingredients.” The rough translation in English is: “Sensa contains an emulsifier, an anti-caking agent, sand and gravel, fake yellow and red food coloring and … " (who knows what they mean by ‘soy and milk ingredients.’)

I have no idea how these ingredients come together in an edible substance that makes you feel full, but I do know this isn’t the right way to lose weight. Losing weight has to be a commitment to change your eating patterns. You have to cook more at home (so you know what’s going in your food), you have to eat more vegetables, less meat and less quantities of everything. The good news is you can make food that tastes better and costs less then the stuff you were eating that made you gain weight. Now that’s sensible and sustainable. I think I’ll call it the Sprinkle of Sense Diet.