Results tagged “food” from KPAO

I grew up drinking soda. The more sickly sweet and fruity, the better. My favorite was Tahitian Treat, but I also went for Fanta and Crush. Then in college I graduated to Kool Aid. It was cheap, and as sugary as I wanted it to be.

Recently I've been drinking juice. Trader Joe's has some fantastic flavors like Ruby Red Grapefruit and Mango Lemonade. But my taste for sweet is getting a bit more subdued.

While I was traveling in Africa, the camps greeted us with iced tea and grenadine as a refresher at check-in. It was good stuff. And it was then I realized that iced tea didn't need to be made from caffeinated tea. OK, so maybe this is obvious to you all, but I put it in the category of obvious in retrospect.

Since I've been back, I've been teaing it up. We've got a cabinet full of Celestial Seasonings from a trip to Boulder a few years back, and we simply weren't drinking it very fast. Now we are. 3 bags to a pitcher. Fill with hot water. Add  quarter cup of sugar. Steep for 15-30 min. Chill. Perfection.

Humans are lazy. We tend towards paths of least resistance. And this is one of the main reasons why I believe more people aren't vegetarian or vegan. It's not really that hard, but it does require a little bit of effort. And that little bit of effort is a big deal for most people.

I came up with this thought experiment I call menu roulette. Take the list off all restaurants in the US and pick one at random. Then take the menu of that restaurant and pick an item off it at random. What are the odds that it is vegetarian? or vegan? 10%? 5%? I bet it's less than 1%.

As a product designer, one of the aphorisms I follow is make it easy to do the right thing, and difficult to do the wrong thing. Since eating meat and dairy is bad for your health, the animals, and the environment, it is pretty clearly the wrong thing to do. Yet our whole society is set up to encourage people to do the wrong thing.

So how can we change this? That is the hundred billion dollar question.

My wife read Kitchen Confidential by Tony Bourdain a few years back, and I vaguely remembered that she mentioned he had some snarky comment about vegetarians in it. When a friend was talking about the TV show with the same title, I decided to search the book on Amazon to see exactly what the quote was. It was much worse than I expected.

On the dust jacket, Tony straightforwardly mentions his "naked contempt for vegetarians, sauce-on-siders, the 'lactose-intolerant'...", and he isn't kidding. (By the way, I love how he puts lactose-intolerant' in quotes, as if it were some alleged condition with no scientific evidence to back it up.) Here's the paragraph from the book that is the real stand-out (bold is mine):

Vegetarians — and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans — are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. The body — these waterheads imagine — is a temple that should not be polluted by animal protein. It's healthier, they insist, though every vegetarian waiter I've worked with is brought down by any rumor of a cold. Oh, I'll accommodate them, I'll rummage around for something to feed them — for a "vegetarians plate" — if called on to do so. Fourteen dollars for a few slices of grilled eggplant and zucchini suits my food cost fine.

Wow, really? "The enemy of everything good and decent"? That's pretty damn extreme. And as for his "accommodation"... I've had chefs at wedding banquets from Colorado to Michigan do a better job creating a vegetarian entree than him. It speaks volumes of his attitude towards his profession if the best vegetarian entree he can summon is to grill a few vegetable slices.

Tony, if you're truly interested in growing yourself as a chef — or even if you're simply interested in seeing how good vegan cooking can be — then you owe it to yourself to try a meal made by a top chef who considers the lack of animal products not a constraint, but a freedom. Have a meal at Candle 79 in New York. Try the black bean torte at Millennium in San Francisco. Have one of the fine chefs from VegAdvantage cater a meal for you. Or maybe try one of your own recipes that the have been veganized by the people you so despise

But you shouldn't pass judgement on vegetarians without at least trying the experience yourself. And if you're worried about the cost, then worry not. Dinner's on me.

There's a movement afoot to eat more locally grown food (for example, EatLocal.net). At my work, we always get a big catered lunch on Mondays, and there are nearly always a bunch of leftovers in the fridge. I was joking yesterday that the leftovers were about as local as you can get. Only 20 steps from where you sit.

Perhaps you had to be there...

Freedom is a funny thing. Even when one theoretically has freedom, there are inherent biases in the system that influence people to choose one path over another. In essence, this is what interface designers (like me) do when they present you with this UI:

or click me
It's pretty obvious which one the designer wants you to click.

The same is true for food. Yes, one could argue that we have the freedom to choose what we eat in this country. However, the system is set up with its own set of influences that push us down the path of least resistance.

It all starts with the Farm Bill. This monstrosity of the democratic process looks a hell of a lot more like socialism than any American politician would care to admit publicly. Yet it's the foundation from which our food choice are foisted upon us. For example, the corn subsidy, which is so outrageous that the vast majority of processed foods have some form of corn in them: corn syrup, corn-fed livestock, corn meal, cornstarch...

The same goes for the meat and dairy (livestock) subsidies. They get massively subsidized water rights, which is one of the primary reasons no drop of the Colorado river reaches the ocean anymore. They also get to externalize costs such as the huge pollution caused by their animals: land, water, and yes even air (Cows excrete massive amounts of greenhouse gas. Literally.).

And all this means that the government and the corporations are the ones who are ultimately deciding what you eat. By making all of these things cheap and prolific via subsidies, it makes them the path of least comestible resistance for a public that views food indiscriminately. Whatever is nearest, or cheapest, or yummiest, or marketed best, or placed at eye level on the end cap of the middle aisle of the super-convenience store, that is what is bought and eaten, likely out of its wrapper while the consumer talks on a cell phone driving 80 down the freeway in a H2 Hummer.

OK, so I'm ranting a bit here. But think about this: choose any random restaurant, then choose any random dish on the menu. Or choose any random supermarket, then choose a random product off  its shelves. What are the odds that its healthful? What are the odds that it is unprocessed (or minimally processed)? What are the odds that it has fewer than 5 ingredients in it? What are the odds that it has no meat, dairy, or corn in it?

I'll give you a hint: It's the same as making love when the temperature is just barely above freezing.

Fucking close to zero.

Great video my Mark Bittman--food writer for the NY Times--on the environmental and health problems with eating meat (and processed junk food). And he's not even a vegetarian nor an animal rights guy; he says so right up front.

I've been eating more fruit, and my favorites right now are kiwis and mangoes. I ran across this how-to video, and it has made my mango eating a much better experience. It's a great slicing technique. But I don't recommend his knife technique (slicing in the air toward yourself with fingers holding the fruit in the way. yikes.)

Like so many of my peers before me, I'm entering into mid-life territory where the metabolism slows, aches, pains and recovery from physical exertion increases, and it's far too easy to ease into a gluttonous, sedentary lifestyle. I'm over 190 lbs—the heaviest I've been in my life. I am getting occasional exercise, but not solidly regular. So on my recent vacation (of course my loyal readers noticed; thanks to both of you!), I decided to turn things around.

I severely cut back on the amount of food I ate, and did 20+ minute workout every day. I also was more conscious of the things I ate—though as a vegan I'm already eating pretty well.

The most surprising thing is how little food I actually need to get by. I have been blindly consuming the servings given to me in restaurants or served up by myself even which are simply way too big. When I was mindful of actually stopping eating (or better, not even starting!) when I wasn't hungry, I realized how little I need.

The corollary to this is that I think too often we go through our lives eating from one meal to the next with copious snacking in between without ever getting to the point of actually being hungry. To truly eat mindfully, once must experience the pangs of hunger.

Now I'm not saying to fast or starve yourself. But think of it as an optimization. How little food can you eat at your next meal to get you to the next without absolutely needing a snack in between? Can you let your tummy rumble a bit and be OK with it? For me the answer is yes. But it requires one to approach eating from a different viewpoint.

Of course saying all this is one thing. Back in the office on my first day at work I easily fell into the trap that is the free junk food in the kitchenette. But now I am mindful of the power of inertia and context. I think I can resist it tomorrow, and if 10 tomorrows go by, I think I can break that habit.

I'm a big fan of Hat Tamales, the chewy cinnamon candy. They've got a great consistency, firm outer shell that gives way to chewy goodness as you eat it. Sweet and slightly spicy flavor. Appealing shape.

But my favorite thing about eating them is the fun experience of occasionally getting a really spicy one. It seems that maybe 1 out of 20 of the candies is extra spicy. So you're going along, happily eating and you get to one that—wow!—really makes your eyes water. Not in a bad, spit-it-out way, but in a hey-this-is-interesting way. That sort of unpredictability sets it apart from other candies and makes the experience remarkable. It's the main reason I keep choosing them over the myriad of alternatives in the candy aisle.

If you're looking for a healthy and tasty spread, then look no further than Garlic Zing. It goes great on bread or toast, or even as a spread in sandwiches (a healthier replacement for mayo). Availability is spotty, so you'd best call one of their retailers to make sure they have it before making the trip out to get it.