Post Category → processed crap

And a whiff of barren witch

File this trollbait under: Someone is wrong on the Internet. If we lived under a dictatorship, I would be the first to lay all the blame on the White House for the lack of huge progress (as opposed to “the fail”) in changing the way Big Ag forces America to eat. But it is impossible for one branch of government to push back hard enough when the two others have been bought off along with much of the media. (Even the so-called heroes among the latter are villains to dairy farmers, BTW. Lookin’ at you, Mr. Cream Cheese For Me, Not For Thee.) I do want to hope that one day, when all the black smoke has cleared, the country may see the bigger picture. But look at what’s happening with the fight over the minimum wage for fast-food workers. What the NRA (either of ‘em) don’t want, the country don’t get. The 10.10 bucks don’t stop in the Oval Office. But at least now it’s perfectly clear: Kale was brought in as the arugula assassin. Call it the Manchurian Crucifer.

Sesame gets in your eyes

Meantime, I have to sorta RT myself from the other day, after we got back from an outstanding outing to the West Indies of Queens: I saw a sadly, seriously obese toddler on a subway platform and realized how rare such a sighting is these days. Somehow the Obama Fail and the Nanny State have helped moms realize there is such a thing as nutrition, and it matters more than cheap sugar water sucked from a baby bottle in a stroller. Too bad we don’t have a dictator who could return home ec to the kiddy curriculum so future parents of America could learn my NYC-public-school-educated mom’s math: beans + cornbread = complete protein.

Cottonseed oil, unpicked

Way back in the last century, when Brie was too funky for me, I remember one of my overlords at the hometown paper saying his wife insisted they boycott the Coach House because she had spotted cans from processed-crap bouillon in the (pre-recycling-era) garbage. Today I’m followed all over the Internets by ads/links to that gruesome saline solution. It’s pretty bad when I’d prefer the Chimp’s dad’s garish socks — if only to strain out that little clot of creepy fat floating in every tin.

Don’t Lump & drive

I’m sure I’ve ranted before that there is nothing more foul-smelling than a Subway, and I don’t mean the kind that allows the people to ride around in a hole in the ground. But suddenly the chain is looking more alluring, now that it has brought out the kkkrazies to protest its teaming up with Mrs. O to try to get kids to eat (somewhat) better. Their racist hysteria is so over-the-top you have to laugh. As you do on thinking the Big O has done it again: tricked them into either boycotting everything until they starve off or, better yet, making themselves roundup-ready for when he opens those FEMA camps.

Pray away the avoirdupois (actual pitch)

Not that I’m cynical or anything, but is there really any chance an indestructible faux food could actually be in short supply when guacamole is as close as the avocado aisle for Super Bowl? Somehow I suspect Krapt swiped a page from the cocky playbook to generate hysteria. And did anyone really ever run out of the rooster sauce? Shelves were full in every store I happened through whenever I broke away from the online panic. Also, too: The gullible coverage makes it sound as if there is no substitute for the cheez substitute. Maybe the real deal, cut with cream or, for maximum gooeyness, bechamel? Seems as if this is a dangerous game Big Fud is playing. People might try the fill-in and never go back to the orange slime.

Gorging for hunger

As for my losing my food festival virginity, I wound up schlepping way the hell over to the Hudson after succumbing to curiosity about NoMad, a place I had avoided like $79 chicken but figured was worth a try if a car company was picking up the tab for a bunch o’ bloggers in a private room. My consort and I had to sit through a slideshow on the new models, none of which was honey-colored to fit this year’s food theme, but we were rewarded with tickets to the foodstraganza that weekend. Since he was traveling, I was going to toss them, but I went online and saw what they were worth and felt obligated to do my research. So I recruited a friend and we ate and drank our way through what I expected to be a gangbang but was actually rather civil compared with many “best new chef” awards parties. Regular peeps who paid were much more restrained than the professional locusts.

Julie, who has more of a track record with feeding frenzies, insisted we pick up the swag bags as we went in, and here’s what was jettisoned at the outset:

Here’s what I expected to see everywhere but what turned out to be, luckily, in the minority:

Here is the elixir someone actually thought people would want to drink in a cavern lined with wines good and bad (well, it was an event where people were lining up for “free” Chipotle just steps from Blue Smoke’s pulled pork):

And this is an image that only needed the Delta pedicabs outside to make more of a mockery of all the Tweets later on about what skinflints that airline’s operator are. Drinks up front, pretzels back by the toilet. . .

Finally, I didn’t snap no photo, but I did find it rather revealing to see the NYT booth flogging subscriptions with its fud issue of the magazine on that particular weekend. You’d almost think they planned it. . . .

700 cases of BBQ ranch chicken salad

And I’m way behind on excitable exposés, but the hometown paper’s big one on the mad scientists’ struggle to save the orange industry (not crop: industry) caused a dustup that somehow didn’t produce a single good answer to why the world needs so much juice. I mean, really. What is it good for? Scurvy’s been cured, while the stuff always rationed in teeny glasses when I was a kid is now poured and drunk like water. One of the most valuable lessons I learned in a weeklong course in “nutritional cuisine” at the CIA is that you might as well be drinking Coke — it’s about as caloric and only slightly less nutritious. Better to eat an orange and get the fiber. Or at least read up on how metastasized an industry built on fruit once seen only in Christmas stockings has grown. . . .

Hamburger Helpless

I would transition with “speaking of yellowcake,” but whatever Twinkies are, it is not “a mixture of flour, eggs, milk, sugar etc. baked as in a loaf.” What fascinates me is how their “return” is getting so much coverage with so little discussion of why they really “went away.” Greedy guys in suits needed to make more megabucks. So the workers got hosed, their pay whacked and their pensions gutted, while food writers were waxing nostalgically saccharine. With all the cost savings, you’d assume the price would be lower now. But you would misunderestimate American business today. Apparently the bonuses got bigger. It’s the Twinkies that got small. I do hope they’ve upped the high-fructose corn syrup to cut the bitterness.

Cream before 6

You have to give the golden-arched evil empire props for balls. On the same day its honchos were denying any role in the ballooning of the human race, the chain was boasting that it had come up with its most caloric item ever. Which happens to be merely a mega-order of enough fries to feed a village, but I’m sure they’re counting on suckers not realizing the so-called meat is not what packs on the lbs. It’s the sides. And not just the liquid ones.

I was also fascinated by the huge fuss over KFC deliveries coming through the Gaza tunnels, which was a story that came out of nowhere and was suddenly everywhere, Somewhere a flack has to be cashing a mega-check. I first saw the “news” on a British site, with the photo attributed to an agency. Other outlets sent their own lensmen to get the pic, but in every one the logo was front and center and very clear. You’d think it was Coke in a Hollywood movie. Once upon a time you would say you couldn’t buy advertising like this. Now you can ask: Why would you? Journamalists will do it for free.

Muslin hummus

Every morning I wake up to some new set of links to food start-ups that are hoping to do good by doing well. And I wish them more than well, since I’m a big believer in food as the solution to all problems. So I was encouraged to read that vulture capitalists are starting to put their mega-money where their big mouths are. But someone is really going to have to answer why they would invest in the type of companies that are trying to come up with substitutes for nature’s most nearly perfect food. They might as well be attempting to develop a fat-free avocado. The other half of breakfast at least made sense, since even vegans lust for bacon.

Like white on Ricin

Relatedly, I saw much hooraying over the return of Twinkies etc. but almost no awareness in the fud world that the whole brouhaha was yet another greedy/bogus “Mission Accomplished,” given that the goal was to destroy the unions, loot the company and let it be reincarnated as a Bangladesh-in-the-USA enterprise. Enjoy your fresh Ho Hos. Just don’t stop to wonder if there’s any blood in the Sno Balls.

Chicken-bulliony triple-cream

I started out thinking I would blog this over to the Epi Log, after running down 14 flights of stairs the other day and spotting at least three Quaker Oats boxes in recycle bins on various floors: Why in hell do people buy that stuff instead of the better/organic/cheaper oats at Holy Foods just a couple of blocks away? But I realized I couldn’t even Tweet it, at the risk of some neighbor taking Twoffense. So I saved it for here, after plucking a double-truck out of the latest “buy $1,095 skirt/save $1” Murdoch Daily. The slinger showed me you can buy QO cookies and snack bars and chips and more if your yogurt isn’t sugary enough. For all the crap McD’s has taken for marketing overly sweet/unhealthful oatmeal, that chain had nada on the processed crap behind the old-fashioned label. It now makes everything but the insulin syringe.