Lobbyists in Sheeps' Clothing

Have you seen this ad?

It was paid for by the Center for Consumer Freedom.

I saw it in the latest issue of Newsweek. At first, I thought it was a joke, some twist on the going health recommendations designed to draw attention.

"Obesity is not a Problem ... [that's] Hype"?

What?

Apparently, the Center for Consumer Freedom is a front group for tobacco, alcohol, and restaurant interests. They've been buying tony spots in popular publications (NYTimes, LA Times, Newsweek, Wash Post, etc.) promoting their dubious health messages under the guise of respectable journalism.

Here are just a handful of the groups they take to task:

CDC (US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest)
Greenpeace
MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving)
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals)
Ralph Nadar's group, Public Citizen
US Surgeon General

The group ConsumerDeception.com reveals the backbone of ConsumerFreedom.com in the person of Richard Berman, a Washington lobbyist who heads the for-profit public relations firm Berman and Co. ConsumerDeception.com lists the individuals, businesses, and organizations behind this consumer charade. It's worth a perusal to familiarize yourself with the names of companies whose hunger for profit eradicates social scruples, let alone respect for science. A few on that list include Philip Morris (over $3 million in contributions to Consumer Freedom), Arby's, Burger King, Chi-Chi's, Coco Cola, Hard Rock Cafe, Outback Steakhouse, Tyson Foods, and Wendy's.

With this kind of powerful, and in my opinion subversively deceptive public manipulation, is it any wonder that - as an example - government agencies like the USDA, with their new milk-heavy Food Guide Pyramid are run roughshod over by cunning and financially well-situated industry lobby groups (in this case the National Dairy Council)?

What a travesty.

The Bastard Baguette

"Batard" is the French word for the English "bastard". In both languages, these words refer to illegitimacy, or what Dictionary.com states as "something of irregular, inferior, or dubious origin."

Batard, in bread circles, refers to an inferior baguette, typically half the length and many times the width of a classic baguette. (Traditional baguettes are about 2 inches in diameter and anywhere from 15 to 40 inches in length.) The long slender shape of a baguette maximizes the crus-to-bread ratio, but requires more time and labor to achieve than its squat batard cousin. (The batard pictured is linked to a Wheat Batard recipe.)

There's one thing a batard can do better than a baguette though; its fat shape and doughy consistency make it ideal for sandwiches.

It's the end of our date, that awkward moment where we kiss good-bye and I hope it's not really good-bye.

"Would you like to come upstairs and make sandwiches?" Lucy asks me.

"Oh yes. Yes, I would."

"I have many varieties of meats and cheeses," she whispers. I lick my lips.

We walk up three flights to her apartment and I'm getting hungrier with each step. She unlocks the door and before we even reach the kitchen, I'm rolling up my sleeves.

She opens the fridge. I grab a knife. We slice some Genoa salami, very, very thin. We slice turkey. We slice turkey ham. We slice turkey balogna. Slice, slice, slice. She pulls out some muenster, some Swiss. We're slapping slices on bread. We're squirting mayo, squeezing ketchup, splashing mustard. Spreading everything evenly. We're pushing our top breads onto our bottom breads. We've made great, big Dagwoods. I give her the knife and she slices her sandwich diagonally. Then mine, likewise. And then we raise our sandwiches and, at the same moment, we each take a hearty bite, as much as our mouths can handle.

"Mmmmmm," she mumbles through a stuffed mouth. "This is delicious."

"Mmmm," I say. "Mine too."

- Josh Abraham, Yankee Pot Roast

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Drink

Tea.

The evidence for tea's cancer-fighting ability is overwhelming, and continuing to accrue. In this recent study, green tea has been shown to prevent prostate cancer.

The findings came from a presentation at last Tuesday's meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research.

A group of Italian researchers are conducting a double-blind, placebo-controlled, clinical trial to determine the cancer preventive qualities of the flavonoids in green tea. All the men in the study were at high risk for prostate cancer, meaning they all had premalignant lesions. A third of those cases were predicted to have full blown invasive cancer within a year.

But!

After a year of taking green tea catechins, only 1 man in a group of 32 was diagnosed with prostate cancer, compared to 9 in a group of 30 men receiving placebo.

The lead author of the study, Saverio Bettuzzi: "We wanted to conduct a clinical trial to find out whether [green tea] catechins could prevent cancer in men. The answer is clearly yes."

Catechins are another type of flavonoid, like quercetin in my apple post. (See Phytochemicals.info for a description of the catechin employed in this study.) Black tea contains the same catechins as green tea but in lesser amounts. Former presidential candidate John Kerry, who was ridiculed in the press for ordering green tea during his campaign travels, lost his father to prostate cancer and eventually lost his own prostate to the disease in 2003.

These particular flavonoids are emerging as such potent warriors against so many types of cancer, it's likely they'll be extracted from tea and dispensed like medicine in the future. Until then...

Salada and Lipton make some respectable green teas. Or you can explore the gamut of specialty teas ... organic, tea leaf tips only, dried in the ethereal Indian sun, picked at dawn by nubile young barefoot women, etc. Whatever you chose, just drink it, as often as your palate can bear.

Eat Your Veggies

Here's the new 2005 Food Guide Pyramid, designed to accompany the new 2005 Dietary Guidelines:

Click on it. It will take you to the site you helped develop with your taxes, called MyPyramid.gov. There you can enter your age, gender, and activity level, and it will regurgitate a pyramid just for you.

Be prepared to spend some time clicking and reading but not really walking away with knowledge you haven't already heard on the news, from your parents, from food package labels, or that can be summed up better than "Eat your veggies."

About The New Design
The new pyramid replaced the old horizontally-placed food groups (see diagram on the right) with vertical ones. I don't get how the shape of a pyramid sends an inherent message anymore, but they kept it. (The Grocery Manufacturers of America, a powerful food trade association was happy they did.) Before, foods at the wide bottom were meant to communicate the idea of foundation-foods, ones you wanted to pack into your diet. Foods at the narrow top were ones you were advised to eat sparingly.

Will this new vertically striped pyramid do the trick? If simplicity is a model for success, it has a steep climb.
________

Trade Your Butt for a Red Delicious

If you sprinkled grass seed on the same soil for 10 years, would you be surprised to see grass growing there?

It's not the best analogy, because a lung tumor isn't comprised of tobacco. But the planting and nurturing parallels stand. It's a tragedy when someone discovers a malignant tumor in their lung, yet spent the greater part of their life avoiding tobacco smoke - the number one cause of lung cancer. That's a tragedy. But how can there not be an element of expectation from the discovery of the same malignancy in a smoker?

No one smokes to reap that harvest. If you're a smoker, consider:

1. Your risk for lung cancer starts to decline the moment you stop smoking.

2. Apples have been associated with improved lung function¹, and a reduced risk of lung cancer^2,3 among smokers. That benefit is attributed to the flavonoids, namely quercetin found abundantly in the skin of red apples. (If apples aren't high on your food preference list, onions are also a good quercetin source.)
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¹ Butland BK, Fehily AM, Peter C Elwood PC. Diet, lung function, and lung function decline in a cohort of 2512 middle aged men. Thorax:2000,55;102-108.

² Kubik A, Zatloukal P, Tomasek L, Pauk N, Petruzelka L, Plesko I. Lung cancer risk among nonsmoking women in relation to diet and physical activity. Neoplasma:2004,51(2);136-43.

³ Le Marchand L, Murphy SP, Hankin JH, Wilkens LR, Kolonel LN. Intake of flavonoids and lung cancer. Journal of the National Cancer Institute: 2000,92(2);154-160.

Hoot Hoot Hut

I was out with a girlfriend yesterday when she said "Let's get some ice cream." I'm not an ice cream fan - not a fan of cold foods in general - but I was willing to check out the scoops. The sight of "cake batter", and "chocolate chip cookie dough" left me queasy; I can't help imagining raw egg. The "extreme red licorice" looked more suited as silly putty. When I said "The vanilla doesn't look bad," she shrugged and moved on. Maybe I needed more ambiance. Maybe I needed a Hoot Hoot I Scream hut:

"Attention-getting structures like Los Angeles's Hoot Hoot ice-cream stand—with a head that spun like a real owl's and eyes that glowed at night—appeared along roadsides all over America in the 1920s. As automobiles became more popular, the shape of these buildings conveyed the nature of their merchandise to customers zooming by.

Exactly why the Hoot Hoot's owner used a giant bird to help sell ice cream has been lost to history."

- National Geographic, February, 2005

Chicken Cacciatore

"Cacciatore" is Italian for "hunter". Any meat can be prepared "hunter-style" or as a cacciatore - just cook with some tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, and spices. Chicken is the most popular meat used in cacciatore, at least in the US. Maybe where you live Rabbit Cacciatore or Capybara Cacciatore rules.

I've been making this dish for several years and I've finally gotten its timing down. Good timing is vital in cooking, especially when handling a piece of meat (white meat chicken breasts) that can overcook in the time it takes to say Capybara Cacciatore. My breasts turn out so succulent the FRE has nicknamed this dish Chicken Seduction.


Ingredients

2 shallots, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 tbsp. olive oil

1 cup dry vermouth (Noilly Prat is a good one)
2 cups chicken broth, unsalted
1 cup tomato puree (canned)
1/2 cup finely diced tomatoes with juice (fresh)
8 kalamata olives, sliced lengthwise, in quarters (or other black olive)
2 tsp. capers with juice

1 tsp. oregano
1 tsp. thyme leaves
1/2 tsp basil
1/2 tsp. ground chili pepper (chipotle or ancho)
1/4 tsp. hot red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp. salt

2 chicken breast halves (bone in, skin attached, truly hunter-style)
2 tbsp. high heat oil (most refined oils will work)
Dash black pepper
Dash kosher salt
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Note: I make the sauce first and use it to braise the chicken breasts. I used to brown the chicken first, add the liquid ingredients all at once, and simmer until done. If you're pressed for time this latter way makes a very fine dish; although having the sauce premade improves the depth of flavor. Taking the time to reduce the alcohol (a trick I learned from a great French Reductionist) and other ingredients makes a world of difference.

1   Add the olive oil, garlic and shallot slices to a cold 10-inch sauté pan. Turn on low and allow the pan to warm slowly. Turn off the heat when the slices just begin to brown. Allow to cool for a few minutes, transfer to a bowl and set aside.

Note: This slow method of cooking garlic or other members of the onion family fends off bitterness that develops with higher heats. You'll notice the difference.

The few times I've added mushrooms to the dish I've sliced crimini or white buttons to 1/4-inch thickness, preheated the pan to medium high, added a tbsp. olive oil and browned quickly. It's not necessary to cook them fully now, they'll cook later with the chicken.

2   Pour vermouth into pan with any remaining garlic or shallot pieces and reduce at medium heat to 1/4 cup. Remove from pan and set aside.

3   Pour chicken broth into pan (don't bother cleaning pan between uses) and simmer on low for about 5 minutes. Add the tomato puree, diced tomatoes, sliced olives, capers, and all the spices. Simmer on low until reduced by half, about 10 minutes. Add back the garlic, onions and the reduced vermouth. Stir, transfer to a bowl, set aside.

4   Rinse and pat dry chicken breasts, season with kosher salt and pepper. Heat a clean 10-inch sauté pan to medium, add oil and immediately (don't wait for oil to smoke) place breasts skin side down in hot oil. Brown for 2 minutes, turn, brown other side for 2 minutes. Immediately cover the pan, turn heat off, and let sit undisturbed for 5 minutes. Pour the prepared sauce over the breasts, recover the pan, and simmer for 20 minutes. (If your sauce is too thick or there is too little to cover the bottom of the pan, add some chicken broth.) Let cool in pan with sauce for about 5 minutes before serving.

Enjoy!

Salmon: Is Wild Really Farmed?

The salmon story is high and wide, and getting bigger.

Headline from yesterday's New York Times front page:
Stores Say Wild Salmon, but Tests Say Farm Bred
(The NYTs link requires registration, but it's free.)

The story in a nutshell:
In March of this year, the NYTs tested salmon sold as wild at 8 NYC stores. Salmon at 6 of those 8 stores were found to be farm-raised, not wild as advertised.

Wild salmon can fetch as much as $29/lb; farm-raised from $5 to $12/lb.

Why is salmon making headlines lately?
The American Heart Association, and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) along with the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) - by way of the 2005 Dietary Guidelines - are recommending we eat fish at least 2 times a week and up to daily (for people with coronary heart disease). One reason is that fish contain more of the heart healthy, inflammation-reducing, mood-mellowing, omega-3 fats than just about any food you can eat. Salmon ranks among the highest on the omega-3 scale. Salmon also tends to have less mercury than other high-ranking fish like mackerel, tuna, swordfish, shark, tilefish, etc.

So, eat your salmon.

But that increases demand for salmon. And salmon aren't found swishing up streams in winter. What to do? Farm them.

But farmed salmon lack the vibrant red color of wild salmon. What to do? Add color to the feed.

But some consumers aren't biting for a fish whose flesh color has been toyed with (The FDA requires salmon whose color has been enhanced by pigment be labeled as such), and whose heart-healthy fats are claimed to contain up to 16 times more cancer-causing PCBs that wild. What to do?

Lose the paper trail.

From the NYT's article:

• One owner claimed his records did not go back to March 9th. (Four weeks ago?)
• One owner said his sales clerks "must have gotten the salmon from the wrong pile in back."
• One VP of retail operations said four of his vendors could not provide him with their paper trail.
• One store manager said "Our salmon is from Canada. All wild salmon in Canada is farm raised." (What?)
• One owner claimed his supplier sold him wild salmon; the supplier said it didn't.
• One owner said "Sometimes when these fish come off the boat they get separated, and I got sent the wrong salmon from my supplier."
• One supplier said his salesman had "made a mistake."

Even if the paper trail is standing in front of you:

• A whole salmon sold to [a NYTs reporter] as wild was pulled from a box marked "farmed Canada".
  "I know you are looking at the label, but believe me, the clerk at [a NYC fish market] said. "Don't pay any attention to the label."

Cole Slaw

A few nights ago the temperature soared to 59°F. I reveled by scraping away last season's ashes from the grill and barbequing a tight little (grassfed) boneless pork loin roast. Mmmmm. This cut is notably low in fat, so I sliced it almost wafer-thin and we ate it on sandwiches with spicy brown mustard and, mmmm, that grilled taste! I'm sorry ... this post is about the accompaniment, which after my succulent intro you might find tame. But I sure didn't. Raving over raw cabbage is usually the province of vegetarians. What can I say, I like vegetables.

The term "cole slaw" comes from the Dutch "koolsla", meaning "cool cabbage". Apart from containing some amount of uncooked red or white cabbage and a dressing, the variations are endless. Carrots impart just the right amount of sweetness so I can forego added sugar. They also up the carotenoid content (see vitamin A amount). And I love the confetti color.


Ingredients

1 1/2 cup finely diced cabbage
1 medium carrot, shredded (about 1/2 cup)
2 tbsp. finely diced red onion (more or less to your tolerance)
2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
1/4 tsp. salt

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1   Toss all ingredients together. Let sit at room temperature for about an hour to let the cabbage wilt and the flavors meld. Stir periodically.

Note: I've tried making this with a small amount of oil, a la vinaigrette, but the cabbage lacked crunch and no matter how little I used, the mouth feel was oily. That's just my taste though. Don't let it stop you from experimenting.

Enjoy!