Techdirt. Stories filed under "food"

Techdirt. Stories filed under "food" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "food"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Fri, 14 Jun 2013 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: Diets That Work...? Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110311/01441013447/dailydirt-diets-that-work.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110311/01441013447/dailydirt-diets-that-work.shtml

The Nutritional Science Initiative (NuSI) is an organization dedicated to improving the quality of research for nutrition and obesity. NuSI is currently looking to clarify the root causes of obesity (and related conditions), determining what makes people obese: overeating itself or hormonal/biochemical triggers that cause overeating. [url]

Consuming seaweed enriched toast seemed to get some people to subsequently eat 179 fewer calories for the rest of the day. The seaweed was ground up and added to the bread without affecting the taste, and it apparently acts as a bulking agent in the stomach to make people feel full. [url]

Is snacking at night worse than eating the same thing in the morning? Possibly. It might not just be what you eat, but when you eat it. [url]

Marijuana smokers tend to eat more than 600 extra calories in a day, but for some reason, they have slimmer waists, higher levels of HDL and lower insulin levels and insulin resistance. So if you needed another reason to smoke pot, it's possibly a treatment for obesity and diabetes.... [url]

If you're a Simpsons fan, you'll want to check out the Lard Lad Donuts at the new Springfield at Universal Orlando Resort. While you're there, you might as well grab a Duff beer at Moe's Tavern too. [url]

A good ol' plain doughnut just doesn't cut it anymore. Enter the "cronut," a somewhat more sophisticated hybrid croissant-doughnut pastry. The cronut was just introduced at the Dominique Ansel Bakery in SoHo on May 10, and it has already taken New York City and the pastry world by storm. Apparently, it's not easy to make -- it takes three days from start to finish to make a cronut.[url]

On the West Coast, Psycho Donuts in the Bay Area makes a unique treat called "The Foie Bomb." It's a doughnut hole filled with foie gras mousse, pierced with a pipetful of balsamic gastrique, fig, and honey, and topped with a salted and fried sage leaf. The store is offering the Foie Bomb for free on National Doughnut Day, which gets around the ban on selling foie gras in California.[url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20130607/07153023357 Fri, 31 May 2013 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: The American Bacon Obsession Joyce Hung http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110311/01324113438/dailydirt-american-bacon-obsession.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110311/01324113438/dailydirt-american-bacon-obsession.shtml 18 pounds of bacon each year. This unhealthy obsession with bacon apparently began in the 1990s when the high-protein, high-fat, low-carb Atkins Diet started gaining popularity. Now there are tons of bacon-inspired products available to the bacon lover, such as bacon ice cream, chocolate-dipped bacon, bacon doughnuts, bacon candy, bacon soap, bacon toothpaste, and bacon air freshener. Here are a few more examples.

Next time you make yourself a drink, why not make a "Bacon Sour"? All you need is St-Germain Liqueur infused with applewood smoked bacon, Basil Hayden's Bourbon, lemon juice, maple syrup, Peychaud's Bitters, and some egg white. [url]
You can be a real bacon lover with J&D's Baconlube, a bacon-flavored personal lubricant and massage oil. Apparently, Baconlube began as an elaborate April Fool's joke, but when J&D's revealed that it was never intended to be a real product, bacon lovers everywhere protested. So now, for a limited time, you can buy an actual bottle of Baconlube. [url]
On April 1st (wink), Scope announced that it was introducing an entirely vegetarian (i.e. "synthetic") bacon-flavored mouthwash. Too bad it's not real because this idea has potential. Imagine, usually nasty-tasting mouthwash now tastes like bacon, and vegetarians could get a 30-second bacon fix without actually having to eat a pig. [url]

Sodastream has been around since 1903, but it went public on the Nasdaq in 2010 and started expanding its DIY soda making system to take on the big soft drink makers. But marketing itself as an alternative isn't always easy, and it had to change its 2013 SuperBowl commercial to remove Coke and Pepsi logos. [url]

The secret recipe for a can of Coca-Cola isn't just getting the mixture of caramel coloring and phosphoric acid right; there are also a zillion other details from packaging and distribution that have been optimized. The top of the aluminum can is actually a different aluminum-magnesium alloy from the rest of the can, engineered so it can have a pop-top and still withstand the pressurized contents. [url]

When making your own soda, be sure to use 100% essential food oils that are rated food grade. Recipes to make Open Cola and the "original" Coke are available, but there's a bit of set up involved. [url]

Here's a recipe for homemade Cheez-It crackers, which supposedly taste better than the store-bought version. By the time you're done making these, you'll wish that you had just gone to the store and bought a box of Cheez-Its. [url]

McDonald's Canada has revealed exactly how they make their fries, "from the farm to the fryer." If you've ever wondered whether their fries are made from real potatoes, the answer is yes. Their fries are cut from whole potatoes harvested from farms in New Brunswick, Alberta, and Manitoba. [url]

Read about one junk food enthusiast's attempts to recreate Twinkies, Hostess Cupcakes, Oreos, and Fritos. While some of the homemade versions were somewhat "healthier" calorie-wise, the general concensus was that there's just nothing like the real thing. [url]

For over 20 years, candy lollipops with entrapped insects have been on the market. How many licks does it take to get to the insect at the center of a Hotlix lollipop? [url]

The Starbucks Strawberry Frappuccino was once made rosy red, not with an artificial color (like Red #40), but from natural colors derived from grinding up the dried bodies of cochineal bugs The bug-based coloring was safe to eat (as long as you weren't allergic to those bugs), but Starbucks had to switch to a vegetable-based dye because people were either grossed out or vegan. [url]

Some European researchers are trying to make insects more palatable for people, and a popular Dutch restaurant called Specktakel tries to incorporate an insect into at least one item on its daily menu. Insects are a good source of protein, and it is far less energy intensive to raise bugs than beef. [url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110226/12400313269 Fri, 3 May 2013 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: Antibiotic Abuse In The Food Industry Joyce Hung http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090527/1600115036/dailydirt-antibiotic-abuse-food-industry.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090527/1600115036/dailydirt-antibiotic-abuse-food-industry.shtml data from the FDA, the livestock industry now uses almost 80% of all the antibiotics used in the U.S. The main concern is that the practice of dosing healthy farm animals daily with antibiotics will create drug-resistant bacteria. About three-quarters of Salmonella found on ground turkey and chicken breast are now resistant to at least one antibiotic, and almost half of the Campylobacter found on chicken products are resistant to tetracyclines. Here are some other examples of antibiotic abuse in the food industry.

Researchers have found 149 different drug-resistant genes in bacteria on antibiotic-intensive pig farms in China. These antibiotic-resistant genes can spread to the environment and end up in many different kinds of human pathogens. [url]
Did you know that organic apple and pear orchards are treated with tetracycline to prevent a disease called fire blight? While this may be surprising, tetracycline has actually been allowed for use in organic farming in the U.S. since the mid-'90s (with the understanding that their use would eventually be phased out). Fire blight has already become resistant to streptomycin -- how long will it be before tetracycline stops working, too? [url]
If you use logic "borrowed from the anti-GMO crowd," you could argue that antibiotic abuse in the meat industry causes autism and diabetes... because both antibiotic use and the number of autistic children and diabetics have been increasing over the years. Right? Right?? [url]

PepsiCo has a breakfast soda called Kickstart -- a Mountain Dew-flavored beverage with caffeine and some fruit juice and added vitamins. Are you a backer for 92 milligrams of caffeine in a 16oz can? [url]

All kinds of deep fried foods can be found at county fairs, and deep fried breakfast cereals are no exception. Last year, the San Diego County Fair offered several kinds of breakfast cereals in a hot, crispy slightly chewy and delicious form (if you like fried stuff, and who doesn't). [url]

If there's an important state-wide standardized test, students should eat a good breakfast before they take it -- and they can get a free meal from McDonald's for taking the FCAT (in Florida) in 3rd to 11th grade. And if anyone can correlate higher test scores with the students who ate at McDonald's.... [url]

Potentially harmful ingredients that have been banned in other countries around the world are still legal in the U.S. What's worse is that many food companies have already reformulated their products to be safer for the foreign market, but they continue to sell Americans the "original" versions. [url]

Olive oil, milk, honey, and saffron are the most commonly adulterated foods. The U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention has created a database of more than a thousand cases of food adulteration from 1980-2010, noting what the foods were mixed with, and providing links to press reports and scientific papers on each case. [url]

Some people choose to eat organic food because they think it's more nutritious, but studies seem to suggest that the health benefits are minimal. Buy organic if you have deep pockets, want to avoid ingesting small amounts of pesticides, and want to support more environmentally friendly agriculture, but don't be fooled into thinking that it's necessarily more nutritious. [url]

There's a chance that the bacteria in our intestines have some influence on obesity. From a preliminary study, morbidly obese people were found to have different bacterial communities in their intestines, but it's not clear if the different flora are a cause (or a result) of obesity. If there is a causal relationship, maybe there will be an effective treatment that involves cultivating different intestinal microbes. [url]

"The Parasite Diet" isn't a new idea. At the turn of the 20th century, some people used tapeworms to lose weight (before modern medicine convinced people this was a very bad idea). But genetically modified tapeworms that are benign to people could be a reality someday. [url]

Freakonomics has yet another podcast on obesity called "100 Ways to Fight Obesity" that covers some interesting proposals to prevent overweight adults and children. Some suggestions, such as smelling a vial of vomit to curb an appetite, are not so pleasant -- and not really guaranteed to work that well, either. [url]

PETA president Ingrid Newkirk asserts that there's no such thing as ~~a free lunch~~ humane meat. This is obviously an extreme position (or an exercise in semantics), but there should be other ways of raising "humane meat" without resorting to eating only roadkill, right? [url]

Animal 57 is an urban legend that commercial fast food meat is grown in tanks of water. However, the concept of lab-grown meat might not be so far-fetched. [url]

The "Blind Chicken Solution" proposes that farmers raise congenitally-blind chickens as a more humane food source (assuming that blind chickens are actually less traumatized than sighted chickens when raised in crowded conditions). The "Headless Chicken Solution" goes the extra step of creating a Matrix-style farm of brainless birds that feel no pain whatsoever. As long as these chickens never realize that "there is no spoon" -- then we'll presumably be okay with this. [url]

Want to learn more about calories? New York University professor Marion Nestle gave a talk in which she discusses what calories are and how they work biologically and politically. [url]

Bad news: Claims that sex burns 100 to 300 calories are just a myth, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. Apparently, one study found that sex lasted 6 minutes on average and burned only 21 calories. [url]

Good news: Watching 90 minutes of a horror movie can reportedly burn almost 200 calories because it causes an increase in heart rate. For the greatest calorie-burning workout, watch The Shining. [url]

How accurate are those calorie counts listed on food labels? Apparently, you could unknowingly be ingesting an extra 550 calories a day. [url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101109/09062111771 Fri, 8 Mar 2013 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Horse, The Other Other Red Meat Joyce Hung http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101208/01334112182/dailydirt-horse-other-other-red-meat.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101208/01334112182/dailydirt-horse-other-other-red-meat.shtml people who have (willingly) eaten it, horse meat has been described as being lean, tender, sweet, juicy, like a mix between beef and venison, and better than a really good beef steak. Perhaps beef products in Europe should just come with a label that says: "May contain traces of horse meat." Here are a few more links about horse meat.

Traces of horse meat were found in IKEA's signature meatballs which had been distributed to 21 European countries. Did you know that food sales make up 5% of the Swedish furniture giant's $35.6 billion revenue, and that about 150 million IKEA meatballs are consumed globally? [url]
Nestle has had to remove two of its pasta products from store shelves in Europe after traces of horse DNA were found in them. In both cases, the amount of horse DNA found in the products was higher than the 1% threshold which the British Food Standards Agency uses as an indicator of adulteration in foods. [url]
People were up in arms recently when chef Hugue Dufour announced that he was going to serve horse tartare at his restaurant, M. Wells Dinette, in Queens, NY. With all the public opposition, Dufour decided it was best to drop the horse tartare from the menu, because he didn't want to be famous for "scandalizing animal lovers." That's probably for the best, since horse meat (esp. that sourced from the horse racing industry) could contain all sorts of drugs, including phenylbutazone, which is a carcinogen and has been strongly linked to bone marrow and liver problems in humans. [url]
Here are some fun facts about eating horse meat: During World War II, Americans ate lots of horse meat when beef was scarce; In 723 A.D., Pope Gregory III declared that eating horse meat was a "filthy and abominable" pagan custom; In 2011, President Obama made horse slaughter for human consumption legal again; Until 1985, the Harvard Faculty Club reportedly served horse steaks, prepared "chicken fried" with a mushroom sauce; and apparently, horse meat is a healthier option than beef, since it's high in protein and omega-3 fatty acids, low in fat and cholesterol, and has twice as much iron and Vitamin B. [url]

The science behind the creation and marketing of junk food can be useful for food companies, but it can also be contributing to the rising rates of obesity in the U.S. Apparently, the key to designing the perfect junk food is to find the "bliss point" by optimizing levels of ingredients like sugar, salt, and fat. Also, in addition to taste, the crunch and mouth feel of junk food is just as important. For example, the perfect potato chip is one that breaks with about four pounds of pressure per square inch. [url]

PepsiCo has reportedly developed a low-sodium potato chip that tastes just as salty as the original. The secret ingredient is "Crystal Salt" which is powdery like confectioner's sugar, allowing it to dissolve more efficiently on the tongue, so people taste more salt even though there's actually less of it on the chip. [url]

The airline food industry should take some tips from the junk food industry and find a way to make airline food taste better. It turns out that people's taste buds don't work so well in-flight due to a combination of low cabin humidity and changes in air pressure. Astronauts in zero gravity seem to suffer from similar diminished tasting ability as well. [url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101123/11541011994 Fri, 22 Feb 2013 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Are You Sure You're Eating What You Think You're Eating? Joyce Hung http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101123/11532111992/dailydirt-are-you-sure-youre-eating-what-you-think-youre-eating.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101123/11532111992/dailydirt-are-you-sure-youre-eating-what-you-think-youre-eating.shtml E. Coli in beef and packaged salads, Salmonella in canteloupe, Listeria in packaged sliced apples, etc. Worries about bacterial contamination in food is pretty common, but it seems like we should also be worrying about whether the food we're eating is really what we think it is. Recently, there was the scandal in the UK over beef products that contained horsemeat. But thanks to modern day technology, scientists are now able to test food products and determine whether they are indeed what they claim to be. Here are just a few examples.

After that whole horsemeat scandal, Burger King has announced that it will be testing its burger patties for non-beef DNA, including horse, pork, and lamb. So far, it has been testing specifically for horse DNA and hasn't found any in its beef, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's free of other kinds of animals... [url]
The US FDA has officially adopted DNA barcoding to detect seafood mislabeling. Think you're eating "white tuna" sushi? Maybe you're actually eating "escolar" which has been banned in Japan since 1977 because the Japanese government is concerned about its "toxicity". [url]
A laser "isotope ratio-meter," which was originally designed to study carbon isotope levels on Mars, is now being used to test the purity of honey. This kind of laser analysis can even match the honey to the flowers of a specific geographic region. Honey is expensive, so it's often adulterated with cheaper ingredients, like sugar, malt sweeteners, corn or rice syrup, to name just a few honey substitutes. [url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101123/11532111992 Fri, 8 Feb 2013 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Hamburgers Gone Wild Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101104/03570811720/dailydirt-hamburgers-gone-wild.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101104/03570811720/dailydirt-hamburgers-gone-wild.shtml names Louis' Lunch sandwich shop as the inventor of the hamburger, but there are various disputes over who exactly cooked the first hamburger (and named it after people from Germany). In any case, the hamburger has undergone quite a few changes since the early 1900s. Here are a couple unhealthy examples of extreme burgers, and a reminder that being overweight doesn't necessarily kill you (but it's not considered healthy).

The 'Merica burger is made of ground bacon topped with more bacon and bacon cheddar cheese, along with a fried egg and bacon island dressing. Thankfully, this burger creation was available for only a limited time. [url]
If customers were allowed to create their own burger combinations, would people really choose to put a greasy cheeseburger between two glazed donuts? The answer is apparently, yes, and they'd add bacon as well. [url]
What are the ramifications of being overweight? According to a meta-study of 97 prior studies that categorized 2.9 million people by a Body Mass Index, people classified as overweight (BMI >30) had a 6% lower chance of dying than people of average BMI. The conclusion should be that BMI is not a perfect metric for health, but the alternative metrics may have a hard time becoming as widely adopted. [url]

Momentum Machines has a hamburger-making robot that can churn out about 360 burgers in an hour, each custom made to order. This hamburger chef can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever... until you are full. [url]
In 2003, McDonald's tested some automation equipment for grilling its burgers and cooking its french fries. We covered this story about a decade ago, but we don't seem to be living in an all-robot McD's future now. Oh well. [url]
If you're in San Francisco, you can get ~~an In&Out~~ Super Duper burger delivered to you for just $10, fulfilled by TaskRabbit via a simple web-based order form. It's not available any time, so there's no option to get french fries during the Renaissance. [url]

Pizza Hut delivered the first pizza to the International Space Station in 2001, which Russian cosmonaut Yuri Usachov ate as a $1 million promotional stunt. Salami instead of pepperoni was used as a topping, and extra salt and spices were added to adjust for the deadened taste buds of a long-term space inhabitant. [url]

Commemorative M&Ms celebrated SpaceShipOne's successful sub-orbital flight and its Ansari X Prize win. M&Ms were also used on a test flight to demonstrate weightlessness to spectators watching a remote video stream. [url]

M&Ms have been taken aboard numerous NASA missions for about 30 years. However, NASA has generally been coy about calling the space-worthy candies M&Ms. [url]

Specially-designed cans of Coke and Pepsi have been on a space shuttle mission during the Cola Wars. The beverages weren't that refreshing for astronauts due to a lack of refrigeration and messiness. [url]

Somewhat unexpected foods have been eaten in space -- such as sushi, smuggled communion wafers, and a secretly-stashed corned beef sandwich. Emeril Lagasse and Rachel Ray have also prepared a few recipes for space meals. [url]

About 9 months prior to a mission, NASA astronauts start picking out what they'll eat while they're up in space. Tang wasn't designed for any space program, but its powdered formula is a convenient way to store flavored beverages for spaceflights. NASA-approved beverages include coffee, tea, apple cider, orange juice and lemonade. [url]

NASA has published several fact sheets on what astronauts eat in space. Random factoid: SkyLab was apparently the only spacecraft that offered both a freezer and fridge for food storage. [url]

Food dehydration is an ancient technique that isn't just for Ronco infomercials. It's not all about beef jerky, but there is a lot of waiting around and chewy goodness. [url]

Preserving foods can alter taste dramatically, especially when intense heat is used to sterilize delicate (and volatile) flavors. Adding artificial flavorings as masking agents doesn't sound very appetizing, but there are some alternative preservation methods that involve zapping foods with electrical current that might help retain fresher flavors. [url]

A deep-sea submersible vessel accidentally sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic off the coast of Massachusetts, and the crew escaped... but their lunches didn't. When the ship was re-surfaced months later, the crew's lunches were almost perfectly preserved by the hyperbaric storage.[url]

A specialized microwave could zap bread and sterilize it, so the bread could last at least 60 days without growing mold. However, it might take consumers a bit longer to get used to the idea that bread lasts that long.... [url]

A 2,000-year-old Roman shipwreck was discovered along with food and wine still stored and preserved in jars. Most of the jars are still sealed, so these items are still recognizable as food -- although no one will likely eat these leftovers. [url]

There's a pretty good reason why alcohol is a critical component of eggnog... it kills bacteria. NB: The alcohol takes a few weeks to kill off the bacteria, so be patient when making a fresh batch before drinking it. [url]

Bags of snacks that contain just 100 calories worth of goodies are kind of annoying, so how about other ways to indicate calories? Imagine stacks of potato chips where every tenth chip was red -- subtly telling you how many servings you're consuming. [url]

The Weight of The Nation is an HBO documentary that investigates the issues of obesity and the food industry in the US. Nearly 70% of American adults are overweight or obese, and obesity is a public health issue that can not be ignored. [url]

An obesity-inducing microbe could be living in our intestines, making us fatter. Fight fire with fire... and ingest some tapeworms! [url]

A robot espresso machine can print short messages onto coffee foam -- and advertise for a text messaging startup at the same time. If this catches on, YouTube will inevitably have a video of someone printing "Marry Me?" in coffee. [url]

The killer app for 3D printing could be chocolate printers. Printing Valentine's Day messages in chocolate is just the beginning. [url]

Fruit labels usually leave sticky residues on your fruit that need to be washed away, so why not just make the label adhesives out of soap? Soaps are usually pretty non-sticky, though, but the idea of using more friendly adhesives on produce is a good thought. [url]

Are generic corn flakes really a huge problem for Kellogg? What if each corn flake was individually labeled with a Kellogg's signature -- written by lasers? About 128 billion bowls of Kellogg's Corn Flakes are eaten every year, so that's a lot of laser printing... [url]

Microbiologists are engineering beer foam that lasts longer by identifying a gene in yeast for producing proteins with better bubble stability. But will nose grease still work to get rid of the foam? [url]

It looks like beer and tastes like beer, but it's not beer. It's a soft drink. Is there a point to non-alcoholic beverages that taste like their more potent relatives? Has Star Trek trademarked Synthohol yet? [url]

Drinking some beer (or wine) could enhance creative problem solving. Being too focused on a problem might blind a person to outside-the-box solutions, so alcohol's effects on the brain might provide a certain amount of distraction to allow more free-thinking creativity. [url]

Would you spend about $100 for some Twinkies? Limited-edition baked goods might trump loooots of t-shirts.... [url]

Illegal hunting in South Africa could endanger large carnivores like cheetahs, lions and leopards. A boom in bushmeat trade threatens the food security of rural communities. [url]

The American poultry industry has invested a lot of resources to create copious amounts of white meat on various farm-raised birds, but now there's more demand for dark meat. Look out for genetically modified six-legged chickens soon. [url]

The European Parliament has voted (again) to ban shark finning practices that endanger certain sharks. The EU first passed a ban in 2003, but it left loopholes that allowed for shark finning to continue. Shark fin soup fanatics may need to start looking into the viability of shark farms soon. [url]