DailyDirt: Cutting Up Your Food...

Fri, Nov 21st 2014 5:00pm

Filed Under:
condiments, food, ketchup, mayo, mayonnaise, sandwich, tomato

Companies:
hampton creek foods, unilever, usda

DailyDirt: The Legal Definition Of What You're Eating...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are some bizarre legal definitions for common foods. For example, we've seen that the definition of a sandwich was under dispute because a burrito place was encroaching on a sandwich shop in a shopping mall food court. That case decided that a burrito was not a sandwich, but food experts don't all agree on that point. Here are a few other cases of defining some foods legally and not with your gut.

Unilever is suing a vegan "mayo" company because it doesn't use eggs in its product. The startup Hampton Creek may be benefiting from some publicity here, and its "Just Mayo" mayonnaise-like spread will likely sell more now. In the end, though, both Unilever and Hampton Creek (and any other condiment makers) may need to be more explicit about ingredients and make a clear distinction between mayo and mayo dressing. [url]
In 1893, the Supreme Court decided that, under customs law, a tomato is a vegetable, not a fruit. A fruit importer was trying to get tomatoes into the US without having to pay the 10% import tax, so against biological definitions, the court ruled that vegetables were "usually served at dinner in, with, or after the soup, fish, or meats ... and not, like fruits generally, as dessert" -- and tomatoes were therefore a vegetable in everyday experience. [url]
In 1981, the US Department of Agriculture had 90 days to come up with new standards for subsidized school lunch programs. The resulting new rules almost considered ketchup to be a vegetable, but the ketchup-counts-as-a-veggie policy was not adopted. [url]

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20 Comments

Fri, Nov 14th 2014 5:00pm

Filed Under:
air, artisanal, fad, food, ice, ingredients, oxygen bar, taste, toast, water

DailyDirt: Artisanal Foods Are Automatically Awesome

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The price of a fancy meal often involves buying a story -- that the ingredients for the dishes were grown locally or picked fresh the same day or fed only grass or given free range of an outdoor plot of land. But sometimes the story behind expensive food-related items is a bit harder to justify. Would you pay more for water that was filtered a few more times than tap water? How about painstakingly sliced and heated bread? Here are just a few more artisanal items that might be a joke (or not).

Artisanal ice is a thing now. Hand-cut completely transparent ice can be added to your cocktails for an additional price. These handcrafted 2 inch blocks of ice melt ever so slightly slower than regular ice cubes, so you might be able to enjoy your drinks for just a bit longer without diluting your beverage. Or you could just use chilled rocks. [url]
If you take NYC tap water and zap it with some UV rays and ozone, wouldn't you think that water should taste different? Maybe it does, but the added processing doesn't make that water any safer or more healthy for you. [url]
Artisanal air is bottled in small batches in San Francisco. The idea of an oxygen bar has been around for more than a few decades (if not centuries), but capturing ambient pressure air in a bottle to be inhaled in a time-shifted experience is... not always a joke. [url]

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5 Comments

Fri, Nov 7th 2014 5:00pm

Filed Under:
alan marin, contests, food, free meal, pasta, promotions

Companies:
ben and jerry, china eastern airlines, olive garden, taco bell

DailyDirt: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

TANSTAAFL is usually true, especially if you're counting opportunity costs. However, some deals are too attractive for some people to pass up -- especially offers of free food. Occasionally, folks even get the better end of the deal by exploiting loopholes, and the "free lunch" turns out to really favor the eater. Here are just a few examples of getting some free food (with an asterisk).

Some airlines offer free meals to their first-class customers, and one man from China ate for free in the VIP lounge of China Eastern Airlines for an entire year. Nice. But not quite as crafty as David Philips scheme that got him free airline miles for buying pudding. [url]
Taco Bell ran a contest called "Eleven Everlasting Dollars" that offered free food for life (at Taco Bell). The fine print defined free food for life as $10,000 in gift cards -- which apparently was based on an average consumption of $216 per year for 46 years. [url]
Alan Marin from North Carolina bought a "Never Ending Pasta Pass" from Olive Garden, and he's eaten over a hundred meals with it. It's a limited time pass, but he's already saved himself several hundred bucks (but on the other hand, he's had to eat nothing but pasta for over a month). [url]
If you want to try getting as much free food as you can in a year, mark your calendars for all of the annual free food promotions from Ben & Jerry's and other retailers. Not too many free lunches, but you'll be eating a lot of desserts and donuts. [url]

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8 Comments

Bleeding Edge

Fri, Oct 31st 2014 5:00pm

Filed Under:
biotech, fake meat, food, gmo, murderless meat, steak chips, vegan, vegan egg, veggie burger

Companies:
beyond eggs, hampton creek foods, impossible foods, modern meadow

DailyDirt: Test Tube Meat Fresh From The Lab

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Some folks just don't like the idea of killing animals for food, but clearly there are plenty of people who don't have a problem with eating meat. Technology might have an answer -- if meat grown in a lab can be considered a humane way to treat living tissues. Here are just a few attempts at making fake meat.

Modern Meadow is a biotech startup growing meat and leather in a lab. The company can grow a 1-square-foot, flawless (no scratches or stretch marks) piece of leather in about 6 weeks, and it's made some "steak chips" that will probably need to pass some complex regulatory hurdles before being ready for general human consumption. [url]
Impossible Foods is a company that has made a veggie burger that almost bleeds because it contains iron-containing heme compounds similar to those in real red meat. The fake burger apparently tastes like a cross between beef and turkey, with a texture that is nearly like animal tissue (or at least not much like tofu). Still, it costs about $20 per burger patty, so there's a bit more work to be done. [url]
Hampton Creek Foods is creating a vegan egg that could replace factory-farmed eggs. Beyond Eggs (and its fellow meat substitute competitors) need to find just the right proteins and emulsifiers that can fool the human palate and also maintain an eco-friendly and sustainable reputation. [url]

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3 Comments

Fri, Oct 24th 2014 5:00pm

Filed Under:
farming, food, kimchi, manned missions, mars, martian soil, nutella, space, space exploration, spam

DailyDirt: Meals On Mars

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Astronauts might hibernate on the way to Mars, but they'll eventually need to wake up and eat something. Astronaut food isn't just freeze-dried ice cream and tubes of mashed up mystery meat. Even though microgravity can adversely affect a person's sense of taste, that doesn't mean astronauts should be expected to live on endlessly dreary meals. Here are just a few links on space foods that astronauts might enjoy.

What foods would you crave if you were isolated from the rest of humanity on another world? Nutella and Spam were on the menu in a simulated Mars mission that studied what astronauts might want to eat. [url]
Kimchi is a fermented cabbage dish that Korean astronauts won't want to leave behind when traveling in space. Millions of dollars and several years were spent creating a space-worthy version of kimchi that wouldn't offend other astronauts but still serve as a Korean comfort food. [url]
Martian soil could actually be suitable for growing crops. This conclusion is based on "artificial Martian soil" made from volcanic soil from Earth, so we might want to get some real Martian soil samples to make sure (before anyone relies on Martian farmland for food). [url]

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8 Comments

Green Tech

Fri, Oct 17th 2014 5:00pm

Filed Under:
antibiotic-free, antibiotics, chicken, farming, food, food chain, ionophores, salmonella, superbugs, ttip, tylosin, virginiamycin

Companies:
perdue foods, tyson

DailyDirt: How Clean Are Our Chickens?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

For years, there has been concern over using antibiotics in our food supply, feeding animals "sub-therapeutic" medicines that make them grow bigger. The chicken industry seems to be shifting slowly towards removing certain antibiotics from its farms, but are consumers really aware of what the progress is (and isn't)?

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) covers a lot of areas, and one topic that seems to gross out our European neighbors is our chlorinated chicken. While Europeans have painstakingly reduced the incidence of salmonella from their chicken farms with breeding and testing procedures, US growers just give our chickens a bath in chlorinated water tanks. [url]
The antibiotics tylosin and virginiamycin are used in chicken feed to help the birds gain weight and grow more efficiently. The problem is that these antibiotics are also "critically important" in human medicine, and the uncontrolled use of these drugs in our food chain could endanger the effectiveness of medicines and create superbugs for us. [url]
Perdue Foods now raises an antibiotic-free chicken (well, no antibiotics that are used in human medicine, at least), claiming to be the first to do so for all of its hatcheries. Other chicken growers (eg. Tyson) have been testing antibiotic-free chickens for several years as well, with chickens raised with different kinds of antibiotic-like substances (aka ionophores). Perdue's chickens may also be treated with ionophores, but US farmers are trying to move closer and closer towards an antibiotic-free process. [url]

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30 Comments

Say That Again

Fri, Oct 10th 2014 5:00pm

Filed Under:
7up, cel-ray, cocaine, drinks, food, lithium, natural ingredients, pop, soda, stevia, sugar, tonic

Companies:
7up, coca-cola, pepsi

DailyDirt: Uncommon Un-Colas

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

A vast number of soft drinks are available, and some of the most popular ones seem to have started as medicinal tonics (even the ones that aren't called "energy drinks" nowadays). Coca-cola was once a headache medicine that contained an unhealthy amount of cocaine -- that wasn't completely removed until 1929. Here are just a few other strange sodas with some unusual natural ingredients.

Pepsi is launching a new soda sweetened with stevia (and sugar), but it's only going to be available online at Amazon. Pepsi True is not shipping yet, but there are already a few reviews from people who haven't tasted it. [url]
Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray soda has been around since 1868, and it may be the only celery-flavored soda that is mass-produced commercially. Celery was once considered a superfood with medicinal powers, so they made a tonic from it, and that story is nearly the same for several other popular soft drinks with supposedly healthy ingredients. [url]
The Un-Cola 7 Up was also known as 'Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda' when it debuted in 1929. The original formula also contained lithium which, at high doses, is prescribed to treat bi-polar disorder. Lithium citrate was removed from 7 Up by the 1950s, but the drink still contains only "100% natural" flavors. (Note: drinking water may contain trace amounts of lithium, too.) [url]

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9 Comments

Fri, Oct 3rd 2014 5:00pm

Filed Under:
boneless, bones, chicken, fast food, food, mcnugget, meat, nuggets

Companies:
kfc, mcdonalds

DailyDirt: No Bones About It

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Some folks want to suck out all the marrow of life, but apparently when it comes to fast food, it's much more expedient to just suck all the meat off the bones, grind it up with some other stuff, and fry it until it's a delicious golden brown. Chicken nuggets are popular with kids meals, and there are apparently various patented processes for cutting up chicken meat into innovative products. Here are just a few good nuggets on some fast food chicken items.

What is a chicken nugget made of? An anecdotal analysis finds that some chicken nuggets (not McNuggets) are mostly fat (~56-58%), about 40-50% muscle meat, along with some bone fragments and breading and other bits. (And don't forget the BBQ sauce.) [url]
McDonald's Canada took a film crew to document the process of making chicken nuggets. Did you ever notice that there are four distinct nugget shapes: the bell, the ball, the bow tie and the boot? If you want to see how the ~~sausage~~ nugget is made, check out the video. [url]
KFC got on the boneless chicken wagon in 2013 to go after the 6 in 10 customers that say they prefer chicken meat without bones. Customers have to pay a little more to eat chicken without bones, so the convenience comes with a price. [url]

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5 Comments

Ramblings

Fri, Sep 26th 2014 5:00pm

Filed Under:
cuisine, entree, food, infographic, italian, lobster, meatball, pasta, spaghetti