If health insurance ever, ever gets reformed in this country, I do hope the batshit insane wingnuts now acting thuggishly at town halls don’t give up too easily. Surely they can get duped just as easily by Big Food as they have been by the pre-existing death panels. Next they can run around protesting calorie counts on menus and salmonella-free beef as un-American. “Get the government off our clean water!” would make a good slogan.
Post Category → big food
What, no artificial lettuce to be had?
Some years ago an editor friend at an important women’s magazine suggested I look into a mysterious phenomenon in food (for sport, not for a fee). A “girl” was said to be making millions with emails on fake food, but at the time some were unsure she even existed. Some, shall we say, suspected she was a front for Big Food — none of “her” recipes ever showcased raw, raw and more raw ingredients, only heavily processed crap combined with even more heavily processed crap. The results may all have been low-calorie, but then so is Tab. Human bodies need natural nutrients.
So I have to say I approached the LAT profile with almost unnatural interest (on the second try, after a blog goaded me, though; the first attempt was thwarted by a miscoded display ad). And of course I found only a timid nod to the head-scratching going on out in the real world. The poor test kitchen even had to test processed crap, and I know from nearly six good years that that team is most comfortable and most adept with what farmers produce with the help of the oldest mother of all.
One of the many reasons I rarely link here is that I don’t want to drive traffic to train wrecks and encourage the addled engineers. And I am not alone. Imagine if a once honorable newspaper had chosen to do what newspapers once did so well and challenged a huge phenomenon whose success runs counter to all that is good. The hits would just keep coming in this viral blogiverse. But that might scare off the advertisers obliterating your stories. Good luck living on little box ads for “lose 25 lbs” and “free Jewish recipes.” How’s that selling-our-souls-to-the-Google working out for downsized journalists anyway?
OMG, Applebee’s
We get the Daily News, but only on Sunday and that partly to remind us we live in a city where people get murdered on a regular basis, information that seems not to matter down at the imperial palace of debt. So I don’t know how the tab covered the invasion of the Canadian doughnuts, but the hometown paper did a heckuva job. Was it only yesterday that Krispy Kreme invaded and reporters wet their high-priced pants? How’s that working out? Not for the first time, or for only this reason, I dread the opening of the Holy Foods near me next month. Stop the internets! A chain has expanded.
But speaking of formerly arboreal media, it’s funny to see newspapers talking about charging for content this late in the game when Cologne chef Patrik Jaros has just put out his cookbook as an iPhone app. Ninety-nine cents here, ninety-nine cents there and pretty soon you’re talking real euros. Meantime, Grub Street has paved a smart new road. Even if it is missing a link. . .
Headline writing ain’t what it used to be
And I’m back to repeating myself: Any reporter trying to sum up a food show that huge and fractious is just a blind person describing an elephant. Pick a trend, any trend — you’ll find three examples to verify it. I saw more ginger. And hibiscus. And much more Indian convenience food. But I also had to agree with Cesare, whom I ran into as I was limping out after more than five hours without stopping: There’s never really anything truly new. Sure, there are better cheeses, far better cheeses, in fact, but they’re really just an ancient product. Otherwise, it’s line extensions: honey with truffles, chocolate with chipotle, popcorn with truffle oil, salsa with peaches, taleggio but organic, cashews with wasabi. And on and on for miles and miles of aisles.
Given that there are lies, damn lies and statistics, I will insist that the attendance on Day 2 (which is when I usually go, after the initial crush and before the dispiritedness sets in) seemed way down to me no matter how the organizers count. Definitely there were fewer of those disturbing attendees who are so barn-size they have to get around by motorized cart. And the hired hustlers were definitely off their game. I walked away from more booths than I can count when the people behind them were chatting away as inanely as the co-pilots on that doomed Buffalo flight, oblivious to people standing in front of them with questions and obvious interest. Then again, the combination of fewer people and more obstacles to engaging may have forestalled a repeat engagement with intestinal distress. I almost lost my stamina on my first stop in the “ladies” room when half the lumbering creatures emerging from stalls as I waited in the mega-line did not pause even to rinse their hands. One emerged clutching a huge wad of toilet paper. Not good for someone cursed with an overactive imagination. . .
On the upside, for the first time in more than 20 years there were signs that even the food at the “fancy” level is evolving. The most fascinating thing I tasted was a Sichuan berry at a booth displaying a dazzling array of microgreens. Sid Wainer, the best one-stop sampling opportunity at the show every single year, has long had fresh produce on display. But getting to taste anything raw and green in the soul-sucking wasteland of the Javits Center is rather mind-blowing. Tasting something fascinating is harder to describe. And I was quite impressed with how Edwards’s pork products out of Virginia, which have always tasted great, have been taken to a whole new level now that the company is starting with heritage breeds. Eat it, Smithfield.
On the downside, I have to confess I succumbed to the much-ballyhooed bacon chocolate (not upchuckable) and Baconnaise (gag reflex kicking in) but could not even approach the truly frightening Tur-Duc-Hen. I also had to spit out many more things than normal, and not just because my digestive system is not getting any younger. I left wondering, as always, how so many fools can set out to build a business with products that are so unsalable. Why don’t their loved ones warn them?
Put the smoked paprika in the botulism oil
Scariest story of the week was the NYT’s on mid-level chain restaurants cutting menu prices in this Bushwhacked economy. If they’re selling crap for even less, you know they’re investing in even cheaper crap to begin with. And so the race to the bottom accelerates. Maybe we should feel blessed to have cookie dough as hemlock.
Worms, turning slowly
The only good thing about being wiped out for days by all the symptoms of cookie dough poisoning with none of the cookie dough: Nonsense about “dangerous” lead contamination of the White House garden had time to be debunked. Even I was almost suckered in, although I turned up very little in recent news about the findings two seemingly respectable sites had used to build their sludge case. I did detect a whiff of organic character assassination when the Clintons were blamed for the “clean poo” spread by the Reagan EPA. And I should have been convinced when the onetime advocate of all things natural got caught carrying dirty water for Monsanto. Pretty scary when the most powerful couple in the country are undermined at every turn in trying to do the right thing with food. I take it all back about Bobby Flay. Bring him on.
Prying Triple Whoppers out of cold, fat hands
In a similar vein, who needs propagandists when newspapers will regurgitate whatever they’re handed without doing the math? Newsday ran a piece on a 2 percent tax on fast food in Nassau County with display type scare-mongering that it would raise the price of a $5.39 Burger King item to $5.85. I didn’t even know the chain sold anything that pricey, but something does not compute. More insidiously, the lede referred to taxing “your” Big Mac. Sorry, we the non-indulgers have nothing to fear. But I could definitely get behind a tax on Big Food-biased reporting.
High Plains Camorra
One brilliant element among many in “Food, Inc.” was the segment of Eric Schlosser biting into a burger with fries. That kind of too-up-close-and-personal scene usually makes me gag (I’d almost rather watch food come out the other end), but it sent a message for the rest of the 90-some minutes: No one is saying you have to give up the freedom food. You just have to give a damn where it comes from. Which I hope finally ends the argument I have had with friends who think I’m ridiculous for resisting whole roast chicken for $10 in a restaurant when I pay more than that for a raw one for my consort and cat. If you calculate 30 percent food costs, you’re talking feet up, feathers in manure.
My second favorite scene was the one of Joel Salatin interviewed as his pigs porked out. After all that had come before, it slowly sinks in that he is lounging next to pigs, and no one is wearing a mask or gagging for air. Raised right, even the filthiest animals are bearable. Which of course got me thinking about a long-ago trip to Paris, one of my consort’s unlamented corporate boondoggles, when the boss’s wife commented on the second or third day: “It smells different in the bathroom here.” No shit. Garbage in, garbage out. I’m not going to romanticize the French, but a country with street markets and seasons and small farms is on the right track. With luck, even its growing love affair with le fast food will not end tragically. The villains can still reform.
Like Heinz on freedom fries
Saddest revelation of the week: The best information from a suspected terrorist came not as his balls were being slashed but after someone gave him cookies. Sugar-free ones because he was diabetic. That condition alone should have cleared him, though. Thanks to cheap food and crappy diet, aren’t we all potential diabetics now? (Yes, I do sound as if I have derangement syndrome. If the Chimp and his damage would go away, I could not miss them and go back to mostly fud all the time.)
Where have you gone, S.I. Hayakawa?
We live in interesting times, word-wise. I just saw the absurd euphemism for starvation/force-feeding of suspected terrorists: dietary manipulation. Orwell has to be cringing. And Hormel is apparently too cowed even to use the four-letter word for its meat — you need a magnifying glass to find “pork” in its ads. Instead, they call the swine loins Always Tender Products. Which sounds sort of like something you’d find in the feminine hygiene aisle.
“You’re able to lower your labor costs”
Consider this a case of ads imitating bad art. One of the scarier food companies is running a campaign to promote its sliced “meats” to restaurants with a testimonial straight out of “The Wrestler.” In the middle of lunch hour, chain gangster says: “It was like a horror movie. There was an accident with the slicer, and let’s just say it wasn’t pretty. It was very upsetting for everyone.” Now he’s using the processed crap. At least there’s no blood on the bread. And any accidents are just where Americans want them: out of sight in the crap factories.
Sweat treats, the e-release said
Amid all the doomsaying on the economy lately, a graph in the paper that runs Turd Blossom columns as its funny pages was rather revealing: Americans are cutting back on poultry, beef, cereals, sugar, pet food and alcoholic beverages but spending more on eggs, fresh vegetables and fresh milk and cream. No wonder the catapulters of Spam propaganda have had no success boosting that scary product. Shoppers are skipping Alpo and flipping omelets.
Anyone seen the Velveeta?
Judging by the coupons I diligently study in my two hometown papers every Sunday, the Depression is officially upon us. Glossy ads for evaporated milk have suddenly started turning up, and with the message of “don’t waste your ‘drinking’ milk on your macaroni and cheese.” When I was growing up my mom bought exactly two kinds of milk, powdered and canned. And she barely had a pot to simmer beans in. If this is the future, it looks rather grim. Of course the funny thing is that the canned stuff is now priced much higher than the fresh. Maybe to pay for the ads?
Little big scam
Mencken must be chortling in his grave over the exploding craze for 100-calorie snacks. More hucksters are not going broke suckering an American public that ballooned with the last fad, for fat-free Snackwells etc. Maybe if schools still taught math people would realize 100 calories is not exactly bird feed. One little Snickers leads to another, and before you know it you could have had a Happy Meal on a 2,000-calorie day. I’m just glad I got my aspiring anorexia out of the way at a young age. A hundred calories was a normal serving of almonds or chips or whatever. And you could buy portions one at a time. What good is a six-pack of baby Twinkies for someone with no self-control?
Lobbyist of unintended consequences
I must not be as cynical as I’m accused of being, because I am constantly amazed at how predictably the food blogosphere has started to emulate the food coven. A dieter gets dissed, for instance, and they’ll throw Rusty right out of the club. Which is just one reason why the most interesting food stuff I’m coming across these days tends to be buried in political blogs, like Kevin Drum’s musings on how California almonds took over the world. You would like to meet their tailor for sure. But I think it was in the comments that someone noted that farmers were paid not to grow other crops, and now new farmers are jumping on the government gravy train. Coming soon: smoked walnuts, more walnuts in your mixed nuts and more walnuts than you could ever eat, with a nutrition campaign to boot. The free market works in mysterious ways, and somehow I doubt appointing Alice Waters secretary of food would have changed that anytime soon.