Category: Food and Drink

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Food and Drink Ideas

Jerry and Coffee

cupI like coffee, a lot.

But I didn’t start drinking coffee until about ten years ago.

Last week NPR ran a series on coffee and coffee culture. At one point they interviewed Jerry Seinfeld about coffee.

Jerry said that whenever he had a cup of coffee in front of him on his show it was just as a prop and he didn’t drink it because he didn’t start drinking coffee until about ten years ago too. I’m adding the “too,” he actually didn’t mention me in his coffee timeline.

As you might imagine, Jerry had some interesting observations on coffee.

Talking about meeting for a coffee, Jerry had this to say, “I got married and I had a family and my entire day was not free for social interaction. And eating is annoying and difficult to arrange, [and it’s] hard to choose places. And meeting someone for coffee suddenly seemed like a wonderful, compact, accessible and portable social interaction.”

“You don’t even really need a place. But you feel like you’re doing something. That’s what coffee is. And that’s one of the geniuses of the new coffee culture.”

When the interviewer quizzed Jerry about where he thinks the best place for coffee is, he said, “I don’t give a damn. That’s the beauty of it. It doesn’t matter. What’s the nearest place. I’ll meet you there. And you know what? Coffee’s all good. It’s all good. As long as it’s fresh, it’s good. And it’s always fresh in New York. … I think we’re a more productive society as a result.”

Finally Jerry reflected on why he thinks coffee is so important in American culture, “I think the answer is we all need a little help, and the coffee’s a little help with everything – social, energy, don’t know what to do next, don’t know how to start my day, don’t know how to get through this afternoon, don’t know how to stay alert. We want to do a lot of stuff; we’re not in great shape. We didn’t get a good night’s sleep. We’re a little depressed. Coffee solves all these problems in one delightful little cup.”

Categories
Books Food Health

Is Sugar Fattening?

venusYes.

That’s the shortest answer.

If you want the whole story read “Why We Get Fat,” by Gary Taubes. It’s the more accessible follow up book to his widely acclaimed “Good Calories, Bad Calories,” which is a good book too, but it’s a slog getting through it because it’s so information dense.

I’m not really stealing his thunder by saying it doesn’t take much easily digested sugar to bump up our insulin which in turn signals our bodies to store more fat.

Nowadays we eat like we’re in (an endless) summer preparing our bodies for a harsh winter (that we actually never encounter). Most of the information Taubes goes over was known and well understood before the seventies came along demonizing fat and embracing carbs. All of which was supposed to make us healthier.

Look around, you don’t need any stats or figures – we’re fatter and unhealthier. That trend started with the shift that really took off in the seventies.

The book explains why obesity isn’t a character flaw, and energy equation imbalance, or a call for more exercise. If “Why We Get Fat” starts to get too detailed for you, just skim over it until you get to a more interesting topic. He’s just backing up his argument and so you won’t be lost if you jump ahead sometimes.

Taubes is the real deal as a science writer with other science related books and articles, he’s a physicist without any fuzzy thinking.

If you’re still eating the standard American diet you should read this book.

Categories
Food and Drink Ideas pot

New Markets?

vaporizer in a barIt’s 2013 and now that pot is legal in two states, I’m sure more states will follow their lead. And with a growing market around legalized pot there’ll be new business opportunities, large and small.

Is pot bad mainly because it was illegal? Or was pot illegal because it is bad? Probably the first choice. New pot smokers probably won’t feel guilty about inhaling for moral reasons, but they might for health reasons.

There’s a business opportunity at the ironic intersection of health conscious Americans, smoking pot, and the ban on smoking in public places. There’s a one word solution to this opportunity and that word is: vaporizers. Vaporizers let you inhale vapors instead of smoke and come in both portable and table top versions. I think the portable, rechargeable electric ones are going to really take off.

Portable vaporizers are sleek,cigar-sized, miniature ovens. They heat the leaf material  put into them to the sub-burning point releasing the sought after chemicals as a vapors, and not some of the bad ones (ashes,tars, etc), without generating smoke. You’ll be able to “smoke” in public because you won’t be producing smoke.

I’ve seen one once, on a plane I think, the passenger seated next to me had one for tobacco. They’ve been popular with semi-reformed tobacco smokers as well as enthusiastic, chronic pot smokers for some time. So they’ve had most of the bugs worked out I’d think.

The owners of bars, or whatever sort of public establishments wind up encouraging patrons to use adult beverages and pot, will need to promote using vaporizers for public consumption. Of course no one really knows how this will look when it settles down and becomes really accepted.

Maybe you’ll have first heard of the idea here first. But, I’m pretty sure if a non pothead living in another country is thinking about these business opportunities, there must be vaporizer manufacturers adding sifts in their factories.

Categories
Food

Can you see it?

If you can see something, it’ll resonate with you better. Visualizing something helps you understand it because you’ll be forming a mental picture.

What about sugar, how much is bad for you?

Currently, the standard American style of eating provides you with 150 pounds of sugar a year. Which by the way, works out to about 40 teaspoonfuls a day.

For perspective, a little over a century ago, the average American ate only about five pounds of sugar per year.

If you knew how much sugar is in each food item you’re popping into your mouth, you might reconsider eating it – if it had lots of sugar.

But who wants to figure that stuff out? Even though it’s printed on the label along with other information, those numbers just don’t resonant with most people, right?

Maybe if sugar content was broken down into teaspoonfuls, it’d be easier to imagine. Or even better, if you could see a little stack of sugar cubes representing sugar content, it’d be easier to grasp the amount and so might hit home better.

A sugar cube is the same as a teaspoonful of sugar. For some perspective, one cup of sugar contains 48 sugar cubes. Visualizing cubes helps  because you’ll be forming a mental picture of stacks of sugar cubes.

There’s a sugar stack site showing lots of common foods, each with a stack of sugar cubes representing the sugar content for that item. It’s pretty shocking visually to see how much sugar is in what we commonly eat, especially the industrially processed foods.

Everybody loves Skittles, right? How many cubes of sugar do you think are in a (2.6 oz) bag of Skittles? Almost 12 cubes worth of sugar. Shut the front door! Just in case any kids are reading.

 

Categories
Food Health Ideas

Vegans in the wild

This probably isn’t politically correct, but I don’t think vegans follow a natural philosophy by shunning animal products.

I do think veganism can provide some health benefits since vegans generally stay away from industrially processed foods and  avoid sugar.

But what if unfriendly aliens show up and wipe out civilization as we know it.

Or a super bug causes infections wiping out most of the world’s population.

Maybe a war breaks out that causes irreparable damage to our infrastructure.

They’re all unlikely, but what would happen if people from wealthy nations found themselves without their normal, extensive support networks? Back in the wild, how would most people adjust? In the wild, how long would vegans last? Have you ever met a vegan that you thought could beat you up? I didn’t think so.

Would they quickly revert to eating animals or hold strong, and probably perish? How long would it take for a vegan to abandon being a vegan?

Who knows. But I’m not too worried. Most vegans would probably start eating meat pretty quickly if our world were to suddenly force us back into the wild.

 

Categories
Food Food and Drink

Kraut

Like lots of foodies, we’ve been making and eating sauerkraut. And it’s great.

The new popularity of fermented foods is a good thing. They’re good for you and are generally easy to make.

All you really need for sauerkraut is a head of cabbage, a tablespoon of salt, and  a large jar and mixing bowl.

First, we clean the jar and bowl with boiling water for that clean fresh feeling.

Then finely slice or cuisinart the cabbage. Layer it into the bowl with salt sprinkled between layers. Next, massage it all firmly for a few minutes to mix in the salt and break down cabbage cell walls releasing sugars and water.

By the handful, pack the now wet mix into your jar, pressing each handful down hard as you go. Make a little salt and water mix,if needed, to be sure the top is just covered because the lactic acid brine deters any bad microorganisms.

Then loosely close the jar and leave it out on the kitchen counter, letting the fermentation happen. After five to seven days and your sauerkraut hits the level of tanginess you like, pop the jar into your fridge to slow the fermentation.

It’s fun and you can experiment by adding in ginger, peppercorns, apple, carraway seeds, dill seeds, juniper berries, or beets. But you don’t have to stop with this list. We haven’t made one experiment yet we didn’t like.

We always hope the five-day fermentation time between batches flies by so we can start in on the latest batch of kraut.

Categories
Drink Living Abroad Mexico Travel Trends

What’s Mescal?

We just returned from Oaxaca City in southern Mexico. Coincidentally, a friend is living there while he’s starting a mescal export business. We visited with him a few times and learned a bit about mescal.

Mescal is a broad category for liquors distilled from the agave plant. The mescal most people know is tequila, but there’re lots more mescals throughout Mexico.

Because I live in Mexico, I’d been thinking about writing a post about my favorite tequila. But mescal is a more interesting story than my favorite tequila (I buy Centenario Repasado most often which, I guess, makes it my favorite).

Different types of agave plants are found pretty much all over Mexico. Agaves have been used as a beverage base for thousands of years here. Probably the original agave drink was pulque, sort of like an agave beer.

After the Spanish showed up and introduced distillation, various local Peoples began producing a drink called mescal using agave plants.

The world of mescal shares some similarities with the wine world. The agave plant comes in many forms and grows in many different soils and climate with each combination providing different taste characteristics for the mescal.

Just as champagne can only be made from certain grapes and only in the Champagne region of France, tequila can only be made from a certain agave plant and only in the Tequila region of Mexico.

Like wine, mescals can can be consumed when they’re young or they can be aged. Young clear mescal, called joven, seems to be considered the way to go.

The agave plants can also be harvested in the wild where they grow naturally, or they can be cultivated and harvested more easily. Each style of the resulting mescal has it’s following.

Again like wine, the pricing is often based on scarcity. And mescal drinkers use similar adjectives for describing the, often subtle, taste differences between different mescals.

There’s even some overlap with scotches; the most common adjective I heard for describing a mescal’s taste was “smokey.”

There’s a thriving mescal subculture, especially in Oaxaca, that’s worth investigating if you’re even slightly interested in it.

 

Categories
Food Ideas Unclutter

Unloved Bikes

When in NYC, you’ll soon notice all the abandoned bikes or more commonly, what’s left of them chained with oversized chains to immoveable objects.

The oversized chains and locks work. But when some of a bike’s parts aren’t locked they seem to get picked off. That often starts the abandonment process.

These stripped and rusting bicycle leftovers are probably just an accepted part of big city life these days. But I’m sure many of the home or business owners on the other side of the sidewalk from these eyesores would pay to be rid of them.

So here’s a business idea for a friend who’s living in NYC. He’s young, active, personable, and likes to use his bike to get around town. After arriving in the city, his bike was stolen because he was using an old style U-lock that the big city bike thieves knew how to open using only a Bic pen (you can see how on youtube).

Maybe call the business AbandonedBikeRemoval.com or something like that. Then get stickers with that name and apply them to the wrecks and tell the person living nearby, if you could find them, about the service.

Charge $49 to remove the first abandoned bike. And $29 for each additional one they have nearby.

The abandoned bike would have to be removed, preventing people from paying you to liberate someone’s bike that they want.

After cutting the lock, the still serviceable chains or cables could be sold to bike shops to resell, ditto for any “vintage” but still useable parts. The rest could trashed or sold as scrap.

The business could be run online and billed via paypal or something similar. Equipment needs would be minimal, a small cutting torch and a heat-resistant blanket (to protect the immovable object). Everything could be easily transported by bike to the job site.

Of course, you’d also need a lock and chain – so no one steals your bike while you’re working.

Categories
Food and Drink Health

The Modern Hunter-gatherer

Grafting allows us to optimize a plant by combining an older rootstock with a new plant above ground to produce what we want.  Our modern life, with its many easy-to-access options of labor reduction and easy calories, has been grafted onto our ancient rootstock that’s accustomed much simpler inputs.

The resulting combination isn’t flourishing. Our obesity rate is so high that fat now seems normal in many parts of the first world and the diseases of civilization (high blood pressure, heart disease, senility…) are accepted as an inevitible part of life. It doesn’t need to be that way.

Start by considering the time frames. Our rootstock, wild, were hunters-gatherers in small groups for about 2.5 million years. Then the first graft, farming – we started our agricultural timeline just about 10 thousand years ago. And our second graft, our modern industrial phase, started say 150 years ago. So we’ve been farming about .04% of our existence and pushing buttons for about .ooo6% of it. Our rootstock is ancient by comparison and not yet adapted to how some folks live now.

Anyway that’s a short introduction to an interesting TED talk from a doctor who had MS and followed all the best traditional approaches to her illness. When she was at the point of having to sit in what looks like a dentist’s chair most of the time she began to look into her way of eating and… I’ll let you watch the TED talk and see if you’re interested. Don’t worry, she’s not going around reenacting a hunter-gatherer life with a sharpened stick. But she figured out how to take the best of both periods of human existence.

 

Categories
Books Food and Drink Health

The Thread

How’d I change from a fat-fearing, carb-loving American into an avoider of most industrial food?

A short history…by twenty, I’d been a vegetarian for three years, but going to college and living in the South made it too challenging and alienating. So I started eating meat again and found myself feeling better. In college I ate a fairly common American diet of cafeteria food. After college, I pretty successfully switched to the low-fat, high-carb style of eating promoted by the American Heart Association and most other institutions.

I’ve always been active and interested in health; and about ten years ago I started hearing a few voices in the wilderness warning about the standard American diet that I’d embraced. Here’s an abbreviated thread about how the change happened in my thinking concerning how we should eat.

About eight years ago I read “The Fat Fallacy” which was written by a PhD who moved with his family to France for his advanced neuroscience study. While living in France for a couple of years, they ate the way the French traditionally have eaten, basically lots more fat and fewer processed foods. When they returned to the States they were thinner and healthier.

Then several years ago I read a book about paleolithic style eating and athletes. It was really intriguing but not compelling enough to get me to abandon the standard eating recommendations.

What really convinced me about four years ago was an interview I heard on the radio with Gary Taubes and reading his NYT article “What if It’s all Been a Big Fat Lie?” and then his book “Good Calories, Bad Calories.” It’s so thorough and well researched it’s sometimes like reading a text-book; it was a tough slog but worth it.

The reason I’m thinking about this is because I just read an interview with Gary Taubes over at the Browser.  The interview covers most of what he details in GCBC but in a more boiled down version easy to follow form. I think you’ll find it interesting, at the least.

It’s a good way to start a new way of thinking for a new year, or any time.