Flash in the Pan

My wife has gone on a tear about high fructose corn syrup because of some widely publicized health concerns. Companies treat corn syrup with enzymes to increase its sweetness, and import restrictions on sugar keep the price artificially high - supposedly twice that in the rest of the world - in this country, so many food manufacturers rely on HFCS to reduce their costs.

It's in wide use - a Tufts study in 2005 suggested that whereas bread was once the major source of calories in the diets of Americans, drinks sweetened with HFCS have now taken that position. For more personally empirical data, go to a grocery store and see how many products include HFCS: everything from sodas to snack chips. We've undertaken an interesting experiment of trying to eliminate HFCS as much as possible from our house. That still leaves anything at a restaurant that might fly under the radar, but I can say that even just within the house, making the switch is difficult. But any ingredient that has Archers Daniels Midland (ADM) spending heaven knows how much in lobbying fees to protect it can't be all good.

Labels: drinks, ingredients, processed foods, sugar

I've tried 'em, and they taste and act like regular eggs. But the people at Eggland's Best have a patented feed mix - which they license to producers around the country (generally you're getting a local egg with the Eggland's branding) - that supposedly improves nutrition. I have no way of verifying these claims independently, as the Flash in the Pan lab decided that when the first day of spring brings more snow and sub-freezing weather, it's time to move south. However, here are some of the improvements over normal eggs that the company claims: 19 percent less cholesterol, 25 percent less saturated fat and 10 percent less overall fat, almost three times the omega 3 fatty acids (research supports that they may help reduce risk of coronary heart disease), five times the vitamin E, and 25 percent more lutein (good for the eyes). To be fair, if you aren't eating egg all the time, then this isn't going to be a reliable source of nutrition. But when you are using eggs, it's nice to know.

We still go for: 1) eggs from our chickens (when they feel like paying off the massive debt in chicken feed they now owe), 2) organic store-bought, and 3) vegetarian-fed free range (though, to be truthful, chickens have eating habits that you probably don't want to know if you're ever to use an egg again in your life). But the Eggland's Best seems like a reasonable choice.

Labels: food, ingredients, opinion, review

There are times I see connections between scientific concepts and the kitchen - not in the "science explains food" sense, but as direct metaphors. One that's scratching at my mind today is the concept of states of matter. As you probably remember from high school (or even grade school), matter can move into different states: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma (which is a superheated gas). A New York Times article on "sperification," or the latest development in encasing liquids (Cointreau, in this case) in edible spheres.

That reminded me of the edible foam that's become a bit of a gastronomic craze, and that was started by Spanish chef Ferran Adrià Acosta. Much of such experimentation seems to come out of the idea of molecular gastronomy. I'd probably put gelatin filtration into the same category, and would probably argue that ceviche, in which you "cook" fish in a citrus marinade, could also qualify. How about steamed milk? The resulting liquid is sweeter than regular milk and has a different mouth feel because of the encapsulated air.

I do wonder what might be next. Maybe we can use the steam wands on espresso makers to foam up liquids other than milk and serve them as hot dollops over some dish. Perhaps films of food supercooled into fragile sheets to drop into drinks and melt as they cool them, or one ingredient frozen about a second. Maybe we'll see thin marinated sheets of vegetable dried, like nori, the Japanese seaweed sheets, used to encase some finger food. Think I'll heat up the steam wand and try some experiments.

Labels: chemistry, cooking, ingredients, molecular gastronomy

An article in the New York Times says that the US Department of Agriculture is ready to add more inorganic ingredients that can go into food sporting the department's organic seal. Under the current rules, at least 95 percent of something labeled organic must actually be organic. The rest must be something where an organic substitute isn't commercially available. Apparently this includes such items as hops for beer, dill weed oil, and elderberry juice. What I'm left wondering is whether there is absolutely no organic substitute, or if a company only has to say that it can't get it commercially. And if that's the case, would the inability to get the wanted ingredient at a given economic price be considered unavailable? And just how serious are "organic" companies?

John Foraker, chief executive of Annie’s Homegrown, argued that nonorganic annatto was a crucial ingredient in the company’s macaroni and cheese. “Organic annatto is not readily available and does not deliver the same cheese color,” he said in a May 14 letter to the Agriculture Department. “Making orange colored macaroni and cheese is an important element of our offering. Without annatto, our macaroni-and-cheese products would be white.”

I can remember my wife and I feeding this to our kids to get away from the more commercial varieties. But the color is artificial? It just seems wrong that organic is the same processed crap as non-organic. Oh, and then the public was given only a week for the public to express its opinion, even though food companies had two years to request ingredients to be put on the list. Maybe organic will have to go out the window and making things from scratch will be the only reasonable option for those interested in what they're really eating, and not what a label claims.

Labels: agriculture, Annie's, ingredients, organic