A huge series of tables comparing the nutritional content of fast food items, fries to fries, burgers to burgers, etc.
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kottke.org posts about food
Why does a salad cost more than a Big Mac? Perhaps because federal subsidies and federal nutrition guidelines don’t match up.
The bill provides billions of dollars in subsidies, much of which goes to huge agribusinesses producing feed crops, such as corn and soy, which are then fed to animals. By funding these crops, the government supports the production of meat and dairy products — the same products that contribute to our growing rates of obesity and chronic disease. Fruit and vegetable farmers, on the other hand, receive less than 1 percent of government subsidies.
As David Foster Wallace argued in Consider the Lobster, a recent study indicates that lobsters feel pain, an unpleasant finding for an animal that’s often boiled alive. But as Wallace says:
Is it possible that future generations will regard our present agribusiness and eating practices in much the same way as we now view Nero’s entertainments or Mengele’s experiments? My own initial reaction is that such a comparison is hysterical, extreme — and yet the reason it seems extreme to me appears to be that I believe animals are less morally important than human beings; and when it comes to defending such a belief, even to myself, I have to acknowledge that (a) I have an obvious selfish interest in this belief, since I like to eat certain kinds of animals and want to be able to keep doing it, and (b) I haven’t succeeded in working out any sort of personal ethical system in which the belief is truly defensible instead of just selfishly convenient.
A taxonomy of NYC restaurant tables, from the lowly Sucker Tables to the Closer Tables. Two examples of the Closer Table are the cheeky Table Sex at Milk & Honey and the even cheekier Table 69 at Alto.
The Elements of Cooking
Michael Ruhlman is partially responsible (along with my wife, Jeffrey Steingarten, Thomas Keller, Bryan Boyer, and Lance Arthur) for my interest in food. His The Making of a Chef and The Soul of a Chef are two of my favorite books on the subject. His latest is The Elements of Cooking, a Strunk and White’s for the kitchen. Ruhlman explains who this book is for:
Every home cook who cares about getting better and every soul who is in or about to attend culinary school. I want all the young cooks who never went to culinary school and have always been nagged by the not-knowing-what-they-missed (probably not as much as they imagine) to buy it. I want every chef to buy it for his or her line cooks. And maybe most of all, beginners — I can’t imagine a better starting reference for cooking terms to go along with other food books. I want every professional cook to buy it for the people who cook for them when they’re not at work. In short I want everyone who cares about cooking to buy this book.
A list of fast food menu items that are really high in trans fats. The list is a bit misleading as no attempt is made to normalize portions (the top two items are multi-portion side orders) but still handy, especially for the list of places that had no items on the list (Subway, Pizza Hut, Wendy’s, In-N-Out, etc.). (via serious eats)
Update: Many Eyes user Michael created two charts to accompany the list above: a bar chart and a treemap. (thx, michael)
If you’re overwhelmed by the thought of switching to an organic diet, here’s five easy organic foods you can introduce into your household with minimal fuss and maximum impact.
Potatoes are a staple of the American diet — one survey found they account for 30 percent of our overall vegetable consumption. A simple switch to organic potatoes has the potential to have a big impact because commercially-farmed potatoes are some of the most pesticide-contaminated vegetables.
New York has a decreasing number of Jewish delis, but the reopened Second Avenue Deli will be among them.
Federman said that his clientele has gone from “95 percent Jewish to 50-50” and that changing with the times is part of business. (He now sells three varieties of tofu “cream cheese.”) “I think Second Avenue Deli, Katz’s, us, we’re all making our little sphere of the world a better place,” he said. “Doctors and lawyers basically live off other people’s misery. Part of the perk of working here is people coming in and being so happy.”
The deli’s general manager recalled his favorite customers at the old location:
But my favorite was when we had five nuns eating matzoh balls served by a Lebanese waiter — in a kosher deli. That’s New York.
See also a writeup of a panel on Jewish Cuisine and the Evolution of the Jewish Deli on Serious Eats.
Whereas Mario Batali says to spare the sauce on your pasta so that you can taste the pasta, Mark Bittman suggests the opposite: the pasta adds little flavor or nutrition so use more sauce, vegetables, and meat. Who’s right? Who cares! Have it one way one night, do it the other way some other night.
Mario Batali on how to sauce pasta.
What you want to eat when you eat a bowl of pasta…is pasta. Americans overdress their pasta 99.9 percent of the time. It should never be a bowl of soup. It should be noodles, with a little stuff.
A photo series of people and their breakfasts. I’ve often thought that a photo series of people and their favorite condiment would reveal much about contemporary American society.
Some information on apple cider doughnuts, including a recipe. Looks like the cider is substituted for the water in the dough recipe. We bought some of these while apple picking in NJ this weekend. So good.
File this under odd jobs: Dr. Jana Klauer is an off-the-menu nutritionist for the wealthy.
“For my patients with heavy entertaining schedules, I go over the menus of restaurants they’re expected to attend, say, in the upcoming week and tell them what to order,” says Klauer, also known as the Park Avenue Nutritionist. “That way, there’s no guesswork. Before they even step foot inside a restaurant, they know what they’re going to eat.”
That’s a bit misleading however…it’s only a small part of what Klauer does.
Giganti: A very large style of Provolone, typically weighing 200 to 600 pounds and measuring up to approximately 7 feet in length.
There’s a surprising amount of language around cheese.
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