How eating certain foods can help you deal better with stress
BY: LESLIE BECK
Monday, 3 February 2014
Munchies got so much worse for you!
Ladies and Gents put your chip bags down and reach for snacks that are homemade or packaged in safe materials....
Cancer in a Can: The Shocking Truth Behind Pringles
Are you aware of the dangerous cancer-causing chemical that is present in almost every bottle or bag of potato chips? Pringles certainly contain this dangerous substance, but they are far from being the only culprit. Although acrylamide is found in essentially all potato chips, it is widely considered to be a harmful, cancer-causing chemical, which makes potato chips one of the most toxic processed foods on the market.
For instance, potato chips and French fries seem to be the worst sources of acrylamide. In fact, a study by the Environmental Law Foundation found that every single chip product that they tested exceeded the legal limit for acrylamide by at least 39 times. Some brands had as much as 910 times the legal limits of acrylamide.
HEATOX was a study that examined the dangers of heat-induced compounds. The report shows that acrylamide is not alone, unfortunately. There are actually over 800 compounds formed by heat, 52 of which have the potential to be dangerous carcinogens. That means that there are plenty of reasons besides acrylamide to avoid cooking your food at high temperatures! For instance, heterocylic amines (HCAs), polycylic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and advanced glycation end products (AGEs) all pose a serious threat to your health.
Decreasing Acrylamide In Your Diet
The bad news is that researchers currently don’t have an effective strategy for completely cutting acrylamide out of our food. In fact, even using all of our best technology, we are only capable of reducing acrylamide in our food products by 40%, according to HEATOX’s report. That still leaves a lot of cancer-causing chemicals in our diet!
Since you aren’t able to completely eliminate your exposure to acrylamide, it is crucial to take the steps you can in order to decrease your risk of cancer. Interestingly enough, home-cooked food is less likely to contain extremely high levels of acrylamide, so taking the time to prepare your own food is a good start towards reducing acrylamide in your diet!
The main method of decreasing your intake of acrylamide is to mostly consume raw or minimally processed foods. If you don’t cook your food, you never allow acrylamide to form! Raw fruits and vegetables are your healthiest option. There is a widespread movement towards eating raw foods, so you can easily find plenty of tasty recipes that don’t require you to cook your food.
If you aren’t quite ready to cut out that much cooked food, focus on eliminating your intake of obvious problems, such as donuts, sodas, French fries, and, of course, potato chips.
Cancer in a Can: The Shocking Truth Behind Pringles
Are you aware of the dangerous cancer-causing chemical that is present in almost every bottle or bag of potato chips? Pringles certainly contain this dangerous substance, but they are far from being the only culprit. Although acrylamide is found in essentially all potato chips, it is widely considered to be a harmful, cancer-causing chemical, which makes potato chips one of the most toxic processed foods on the market.
The Story Behind Acrylamide
Acrylamide develops when carbohydrate-rich foods are cooked at high temperatures (anything above 212°F (100°C). Whether a potato is baked, fried, or roasted, acrylamide will be produced. Many of our standard carbohydrates can be slightly toxic when cooked, including potatoes, and grains. But the levels of acrylamide you would get from naturally cooked whole foods will never be as elevated as junk food.For instance, potato chips and French fries seem to be the worst sources of acrylamide. In fact, a study by the Environmental Law Foundation found that every single chip product that they tested exceeded the legal limit for acrylamide by at least 39 times. Some brands had as much as 910 times the legal limits of acrylamide.
HEATOX was a study that examined the dangers of heat-induced compounds. The report shows that acrylamide is not alone, unfortunately. There are actually over 800 compounds formed by heat, 52 of which have the potential to be dangerous carcinogens. That means that there are plenty of reasons besides acrylamide to avoid cooking your food at high temperatures! For instance, heterocylic amines (HCAs), polycylic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and advanced glycation end products (AGEs) all pose a serious threat to your health.
Decreasing Acrylamide In Your Diet
The bad news is that researchers currently don’t have an effective strategy for completely cutting acrylamide out of our food. In fact, even using all of our best technology, we are only capable of reducing acrylamide in our food products by 40%, according to HEATOX’s report. That still leaves a lot of cancer-causing chemicals in our diet!
Since you aren’t able to completely eliminate your exposure to acrylamide, it is crucial to take the steps you can in order to decrease your risk of cancer. Interestingly enough, home-cooked food is less likely to contain extremely high levels of acrylamide, so taking the time to prepare your own food is a good start towards reducing acrylamide in your diet!
The main method of decreasing your intake of acrylamide is to mostly consume raw or minimally processed foods. If you don’t cook your food, you never allow acrylamide to form! Raw fruits and vegetables are your healthiest option. There is a widespread movement towards eating raw foods, so you can easily find plenty of tasty recipes that don’t require you to cook your food.
If you aren’t quite ready to cut out that much cooked food, focus on eliminating your intake of obvious problems, such as donuts, sodas, French fries, and, of course, potato chips.
Wednesday, 6 November 2013
All you need to know to host a soup swap
When Angelika Heim had her first child three years ago, she started making large batches of soup to freeze as a time-saver for feeding her growing family.
She told her other new-mom friends what she was up to, some of whom happened to be excellent cooks, and before you could say, “Pass the ladle,” a soup swap was born.
The first time she held a swap, she invited four close friends to her house, asking each one to come with a big pot of soup. The recipe ideas were shared via e-mail ahead of time to avoid duplication and to invite feedback about allergies and aversions. Then, on the day of the event, “we divided up the soups into separate containers and everyone went home with five different freezer-ready meals,” says Heim, a Toronto lawyer who recently gave birth for the second time.
That first soup swap was named Super Bowl Sunday and the gathering was so successful that it soon spawned a second edition with a third planned for later this year. (A sauce swap is also in the works.)
“I do the swaps because I love to cook but sometimes my repertoire starts to feel repetitive,” Heim explains. “Trying other people’s food serves as inspiration and gives our family a night off from cooking, which is great when you have a toddler and newborn in tow.”
But the soup swap is popular for more than just the break from cooking that a well-stocked freezer provides.
The event itself gives the friends an excuse to get together on a Saturday afternoon and relax over a gourmet brunch that Heim prepares. There are no kids or husbands in attendance, there is always wine and the conversation typically touches on everything but soup – at least until the warm bottles and Tupperwares (and accompanying printouts of the recipes) are distributed at the end of the afternoon.
The soup swap is said to have originated in 1999 in Seattle by Web consultant Knox Gardner, who took the notion of soup-as-soul-food and turned it into a social-media phenomenon when he created the site soupswap.com.
Since its launch, followers from all across North America and as far away as Scotland have participated in National Soup Swap Day, whose seventh annual instalment took place this past January, following the tips laid out on Gardner’s site.
As he writes on his blog, soup swaps cement communities: “It’s good to know your neighbours and to have them know you. Drinking wine, swapping soup and listening to how much care and interest people put into cooking for others is a great way to start.”
That has certainly been the experience of Lydia Walshin, a Rhode Island-based e-cookbook author who is herself a National Soup Swap Day devotee. “I’ve hosted four soup swaps,” says Walshin, who shares her own recipes on the two websites she runs, soupchick.com and theperfectpantry.com.
“The first time, I invited five girlfriends, so we had six soups to swap including my own. The last time I did it, 24 women came. It’s definitely growing in popularity.”
This can present its own challenges.
Not everyone owns a pot that can hold more than six quarts of liquid, so for a larger soup party – that is, anything more crowded than the host and five guests – a little more organization (and a lottery system) will be required. Here are Walshin’s suggestions for a swap that’s sure to be a hit.
1. Let every guest know how many soup containers to bring and what volume of soup each one should hold (a quart-sized jar, bag or Tupperware is a good choice). And ask guests to bring all soups to the swap frozen. (They’re easier to transport that way.)
2. Ask all participants to e-mail their recipes to you before the event. You can collate them into a single document and forward them to everyone after the swap, but print one copy to have on hand the day of the gathering so that attendees can peruse the ingredient list of each soup before making their selections.
3. For a larger group, organize a lottery system. Start by making numbered tags to determine what order guests will choose their soups in. (You’ll need as many numbers as you have guests, not including yourself, because as host, you should be the last to choose in each round.) At the swap, you’ll place all the numbers in a bowl and invite guests to draw. Number one chooses a soup first and so on until all the guests have picked their first soup. Next, they’ll put all the numbers back in the bowl, then choose again for the second round, repeating until all the soup is spoken for.
4. When introducing the soups at the beginning of the swap, choose a lively storyteller to present her soup first – explaining what’s in it and why she chose the recipe. People tend to follow the leader, and a good presenter will set the tone for the evening. If you are the best presenter in your group, go first.
5. Invite the best soup makers you know, and don’t be afraid to challenge them with ground rules – all soups, for instance, could be gluten-free or meatless.
After all, it’s no fun when the only soups left are meat-based and the last people to select their soups are vegetarians.
Of course, it’s the host’s responsibility to trade a jar or two to make sure guests leave with soups they will enjoy.
She told her other new-mom friends what she was up to, some of whom happened to be excellent cooks, and before you could say, “Pass the ladle,” a soup swap was born.
The first time she held a swap, she invited four close friends to her house, asking each one to come with a big pot of soup. The recipe ideas were shared via e-mail ahead of time to avoid duplication and to invite feedback about allergies and aversions. Then, on the day of the event, “we divided up the soups into separate containers and everyone went home with five different freezer-ready meals,” says Heim, a Toronto lawyer who recently gave birth for the second time.
That first soup swap was named Super Bowl Sunday and the gathering was so successful that it soon spawned a second edition with a third planned for later this year. (A sauce swap is also in the works.)
“I do the swaps because I love to cook but sometimes my repertoire starts to feel repetitive,” Heim explains. “Trying other people’s food serves as inspiration and gives our family a night off from cooking, which is great when you have a toddler and newborn in tow.”
But the soup swap is popular for more than just the break from cooking that a well-stocked freezer provides.
The event itself gives the friends an excuse to get together on a Saturday afternoon and relax over a gourmet brunch that Heim prepares. There are no kids or husbands in attendance, there is always wine and the conversation typically touches on everything but soup – at least until the warm bottles and Tupperwares (and accompanying printouts of the recipes) are distributed at the end of the afternoon.
The soup swap is said to have originated in 1999 in Seattle by Web consultant Knox Gardner, who took the notion of soup-as-soul-food and turned it into a social-media phenomenon when he created the site soupswap.com.
Since its launch, followers from all across North America and as far away as Scotland have participated in National Soup Swap Day, whose seventh annual instalment took place this past January, following the tips laid out on Gardner’s site.
As he writes on his blog, soup swaps cement communities: “It’s good to know your neighbours and to have them know you. Drinking wine, swapping soup and listening to how much care and interest people put into cooking for others is a great way to start.”
That has certainly been the experience of Lydia Walshin, a Rhode Island-based e-cookbook author who is herself a National Soup Swap Day devotee. “I’ve hosted four soup swaps,” says Walshin, who shares her own recipes on the two websites she runs, soupchick.com and theperfectpantry.com.
“The first time, I invited five girlfriends, so we had six soups to swap including my own. The last time I did it, 24 women came. It’s definitely growing in popularity.”
This can present its own challenges.
Not everyone owns a pot that can hold more than six quarts of liquid, so for a larger soup party – that is, anything more crowded than the host and five guests – a little more organization (and a lottery system) will be required. Here are Walshin’s suggestions for a swap that’s sure to be a hit.
1. Let every guest know how many soup containers to bring and what volume of soup each one should hold (a quart-sized jar, bag or Tupperware is a good choice). And ask guests to bring all soups to the swap frozen. (They’re easier to transport that way.)
2. Ask all participants to e-mail their recipes to you before the event. You can collate them into a single document and forward them to everyone after the swap, but print one copy to have on hand the day of the gathering so that attendees can peruse the ingredient list of each soup before making their selections.
3. For a larger group, organize a lottery system. Start by making numbered tags to determine what order guests will choose their soups in. (You’ll need as many numbers as you have guests, not including yourself, because as host, you should be the last to choose in each round.) At the swap, you’ll place all the numbers in a bowl and invite guests to draw. Number one chooses a soup first and so on until all the guests have picked their first soup. Next, they’ll put all the numbers back in the bowl, then choose again for the second round, repeating until all the soup is spoken for.
4. When introducing the soups at the beginning of the swap, choose a lively storyteller to present her soup first – explaining what’s in it and why she chose the recipe. People tend to follow the leader, and a good presenter will set the tone for the evening. If you are the best presenter in your group, go first.
5. Invite the best soup makers you know, and don’t be afraid to challenge them with ground rules – all soups, for instance, could be gluten-free or meatless.
After all, it’s no fun when the only soups left are meat-based and the last people to select their soups are vegetarians.
Of course, it’s the host’s responsibility to trade a jar or two to make sure guests leave with soups they will enjoy.
Should you always tip at bars or restaurants? How much?
If you look up the etiquette for leaving a tip, pretty much the only thing you won’t find is a consensus.
Everyone seems to have their own set of rules and rationale for each situation. Tipping is of course standard for table-service, but many people get upset if they get prompted to leave a tip in the digital payment terminal for counter-service.
We are warmer to the idea of a tip jar and on the occasion that someone impresses with their customer service behind a counter, we are happy to leave a tip. But the opportunity for that employee is somewhat limited as the interaction is very quick, so counter tipping doesn’t happen often. Even worse is when you call in a take-out order and get the tip prompt on the terminal when you’re simply picking up the food.
Using the automatic tip that is added to the bill of larger groups as a guideline, the standard tip for table-service is 15 per cent. We have the flexibility to adjust that up or down but it’s worth considering what the server is responsible for, and what is beyond their control. If the food is bad, that doesn’t warrant a lower tip. Conversely, if the food is great, that doesn’t warrant a larger tip. Presumably the menu prices will reflect the food quality, location, and ambiance of the restaurant. From a consumer’s perspective, the tip should be based on the service.
Last week I had two separate cab drivers earn themselves no tip within minutes of getting into their cab. Both took personal calls and spoke quite loudly for the majority of the trip. How else do I justify leaving a tip for the great drivers who help with luggage, engage in polite conversation when appropriate, and don’t drive like they’re trapped in a pinball machine? If the tip is a reward that moulds behaviour, I certainly want to encourage what I like, and discourage what I don’t.
That’s our prerogative, right?
Apparently not, according to some. I’ve often heard the argument that tips are necessary for the recipient to earn a decent living: the hourly pay in many food retail jobs is low, so servers rely on tips to bolster their earnings. Servers may rely on tips, but that doesn’t mean they should expect one. It just means that they have a greater incentive to provide good service. I’m happy to tip 20 per cent or more - when it’s warranted. But I’m also not afraid to forego a tip for poor service.
The notion that tipping should be mandatory in order to make it financially worthwhile to be a server suggests the economics of that business are wrong. If the restaurant can’t afford to raise the hourly wages and pass on the increase to customers, that restaurant isn’t good enough.
Conversely, when tipping is mandatory, that’s effectively the same thing as raising prices. But it precludes the great servers from making more money since their exceptional service wouldn’t be rewarded as much. Even worse, it could be rewarded at the same level as poor service.
Give us your two cents on tipping. What’s your philosophy? Do you have any rules of thumb? For example, some people tip a percentage on the food total before tax, and then a flat rate per bottle of wine when eating out. Others just tip 15 per cent on the total no matter what. Some never tip for delivery or counter service. Do you?
Everyone seems to have their own set of rules and rationale for each situation. Tipping is of course standard for table-service, but many people get upset if they get prompted to leave a tip in the digital payment terminal for counter-service.
We are warmer to the idea of a tip jar and on the occasion that someone impresses with their customer service behind a counter, we are happy to leave a tip. But the opportunity for that employee is somewhat limited as the interaction is very quick, so counter tipping doesn’t happen often. Even worse is when you call in a take-out order and get the tip prompt on the terminal when you’re simply picking up the food.
Using the automatic tip that is added to the bill of larger groups as a guideline, the standard tip for table-service is 15 per cent. We have the flexibility to adjust that up or down but it’s worth considering what the server is responsible for, and what is beyond their control. If the food is bad, that doesn’t warrant a lower tip. Conversely, if the food is great, that doesn’t warrant a larger tip. Presumably the menu prices will reflect the food quality, location, and ambiance of the restaurant. From a consumer’s perspective, the tip should be based on the service.
Last week I had two separate cab drivers earn themselves no tip within minutes of getting into their cab. Both took personal calls and spoke quite loudly for the majority of the trip. How else do I justify leaving a tip for the great drivers who help with luggage, engage in polite conversation when appropriate, and don’t drive like they’re trapped in a pinball machine? If the tip is a reward that moulds behaviour, I certainly want to encourage what I like, and discourage what I don’t.
That’s our prerogative, right?
Apparently not, according to some. I’ve often heard the argument that tips are necessary for the recipient to earn a decent living: the hourly pay in many food retail jobs is low, so servers rely on tips to bolster their earnings. Servers may rely on tips, but that doesn’t mean they should expect one. It just means that they have a greater incentive to provide good service. I’m happy to tip 20 per cent or more - when it’s warranted. But I’m also not afraid to forego a tip for poor service.
The notion that tipping should be mandatory in order to make it financially worthwhile to be a server suggests the economics of that business are wrong. If the restaurant can’t afford to raise the hourly wages and pass on the increase to customers, that restaurant isn’t good enough.
Conversely, when tipping is mandatory, that’s effectively the same thing as raising prices. But it precludes the great servers from making more money since their exceptional service wouldn’t be rewarded as much. Even worse, it could be rewarded at the same level as poor service.
Give us your two cents on tipping. What’s your philosophy? Do you have any rules of thumb? For example, some people tip a percentage on the food total before tax, and then a flat rate per bottle of wine when eating out. Others just tip 15 per cent on the total no matter what. Some never tip for delivery or counter service. Do you?
Monday, 4 November 2013
If the Iron Chef can eat it so can i!
http://www.nytimes.com/recipes/1015237/spicy-shrimp-saute.html
Spicy Shrimp Sauté
By MARIO BATALI
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons red curry paste
- 1/4 cup fish sauce
- 1/4 cup sambal
- 1/4 cup sweet chili sauce
- 2 pounds medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
- 3 tablespoons light sesame oil
- 1 cup sliced scallions
- 2 tablespoons sweet soy sauce
- 1(14-ounce) can light coconut milk
- 1 bunch cilantro, chopped.
Preparation
- 1.
- Combine curry paste, fish sauce, sambal and chili sauce in a medium bowl; add shrimp, tossing to coat. Place a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until hot. Add oil, and heat till smoking then add the shrimp mixture, and sauté for 2 minutes. Add scallions; cover, and cook for 3 minutes. Stir in soy sauce and coconut milk. Cook for 3 minutes or until thoroughly heated. Add
Michael Moss on Getting People to Eat Their Vegetables
Behind the Cover Story: Michael Moss on Getting People to Eat Their Vegetables
By RACHEL NOLAN
Tony Cenicola/The New York Times Michael MossGenerally The Times doesn’t commission ad campaigns for vegetables or for anything else. How did you come up with this rather odd idea?
The reporting started out in a very different direction. The idea was, how could we get blueberries to cost less so that people would be more open to buying them? This led me into the morass of supply issues like pricing. I spent weeks and weeks trying to untangle that. And I came out of the tunnel with a different question: how better to understand the demand side, which seemed more important. Farmers would never grow more fruits and vegetables if people didn’t want more of them. And that way the price would never go down. I had done some reporting for my book on the genius marketing strategies employed by the snack-food industry. I had spoken to the former president of Coca-Cola, Jeff Dunn, who had gone to work doing what he calls his “karmic debt” for a farm that grows baby carrots. And they had done a little campaign toying with the idea of stealing from the playbook of the junk-food industry to apply it to baby carrots, and it seems to have worked. I thought that baby carrots were too easy. I wondered if an ad agency could do something similar for one of the toughest sells in the produce aisle, broccoli.
So you chose broccoli because you thought it was, Bush Sr.-style, the hardest sell?
Exactly. From Bush Sr. to seeing it play out in my own family and knowing that it triggers bad memories for many baby boomers. But I also chose broccoli for being loaded with a huge number of nutrients. It has great potential, but a lot of negatives to overcome before selling more.
Did the ad-agency employees complain to you about the difficulty of selling broccoli?
They were really struggling. The Victors & Spoils employees were on a mission to try to understand what broccoli means to people, so they did a lot of interviews. They asked, for example, what people’s one-word associations with broccoli were. These were things like “healthy” and “good for you.” And it really seemed you couldn’t sell based on these criteria. That’s what the government has been trying and failing to do for years. People associate broccoli with something that wouldn’t help sell it. After the ad people had wandered around Colorado talking to farmers and chefs and people in schools, when they asked me what my single-word association with broccoli was, it was “despair.” I had no thoughts on how they would come up with anything at all.
The campaign they finally came up with was to pick a fight with kale, based on Pepsi versus Coca-Cola. How was it that that war helped raise sales of both?
I thought they were going to go after French fries or potato chips. Because ultimately that is what we are talking about here from a public health standpoint. Some of these people who had worked for Coca-Cola knew the secret of the great soda war, which is that when Pepsi went after Coca-Cola, or vice versa, ultimately sales of both went up. When the people at Victor & Spoils looked around for the big shot in the produce aisle, they realized it was kale. And they took off after kale. At first I was aghast — because the mission is not to drive down sales of kale — until they explained to me that sales of both would go up. Marketing people call this “buzz.” Of course, “43 percent less pretentious than kale” is obviously tongue-in-cheek.
That was just the first phase, which would play well in Brooklyn or Portland. They came up with another stage to go after people who weren’t paying much attention to vegetables at all. And that’s when they came up with the “alpha” vegetable. The idea was broccoli as a big, powerful vegetable that could appeal to both women and men. The idea is to push emotional buttons of both groups. That’s what the ad people study and know about. And for that second group they came up with big, muscular ideas, like roasting broccoli in a helicopter over a volcano.
One of my criteria in choosing Victor & Spoils was that they let me sit in on their creation of this campaign. I happen to think that the video that Gabe Johnson has done to accompany this story is just fantastic. It takes you inside a “Mad Men”-like setting where real ad-agency people are struggling and ultimately triumphing. It is so much fun to watch them work. They spend most of their time selling consumer goods that are arguably very questionable for the world’s health, and so it is fun to watch them use their talents to do some potential good for the world.
Victor & Spoils did this campaign free for The Times, as an example, but might broccoli growers seize on it and actually roll it out?
Over the course of reporting this, back in June, people at the Produce Marketing Association started seeing the light on their marketing practices. They used to think, like the government, that all they had to do was say vegetables were healthy. They now know that they have to do something bigger. They have also come to realize that it doesn’t have to cost tens of millions of dollars to buy TV advertising. Social media is more affordable. That’s critical because produce farmers have thinner margins than those who make other products in the grocery store. Picking up on this campaign might cost about $3 million to $7 million, depending how big you wanted to make it. That’s within the means of the Produce Marketing Association.
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