Food: An Obvious Question...

I suppose any cuisine seen from the perspective of another culture must be a bit odd. There are any number of foods we eat as part of our own cultural heritage that others look upon with a mix of wonder, disbelief, and even disgust.

From Western eyes Japanese foods can raise many of these feelings. After all who else creates create-your-own-sushi-candy kits?

However beyond the surface cuisines can raise really simple questions. Using Japanese cuisine as an example here's one question: Why does a food additive we tend to despise for its believed side effects not seem to affect a country that's swimming in the additive? Or more specifically If MSG is so bad for you, why doesn't everyone in Asia have a headache?

It's an interesting question on several levels. Alex Renton's article for the Guardian back in 2005 covers quite a few of those angles. Including a fact many of us don't know. There is another basic taste other than the four we're usually familiar with. We learn about sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. But there's a fifth - savouriness or umami. And nothing provides umami like glutamate. In fact mother's milk has 10 times the glutamate than cow's milk. We like the taste of umami a lot. Most of it just don't know that it exists let alone how good it makes food taste.

So, unless you are allergic to monosodium glutamate, it may be time to rethink our dislike of it. Or at least we should rethink the power of glutamate in general. Foods that are high in glutamate may end up making your meals taste better than you ever thought possible.

Food: I Can Eat it But Not Grow it?

The war against drugs has had some weird consequences. America has an incredible number of people behind bars for what, elsewhere in the world, is considered a minor offense or no offense at all. The U.S. spends incredible amounts to stop the importing, growing, creating, transporting, selling, and use of a whole number of substances.

From crystal meth to marijuana to ecstasy and opium law enforcement is on the case.

Which leaves me with a minor problem.

The problem isn't that I use drugs. I don't use drugs - not 'hard' nor 'soft'. I don't judge those who use drugs. Especially if they use them medicinally, or recreationally, and above all responsibly. I consider alcohol as much of a drug as most of the 'illegal' ones and I don't think everyone should stop drinking.

The problem isn't that I'm dead set against the drug war in its entirety and that I think all drugs should be legal. I'm split on the issue of legalization since I don't think any and all drugs should be legalized. I'm not particularly in favour of open unregulated legalization of everything.

No the problem is that I happen to like a food that is intimately related to an illicit drug. One that can set of false alarms on drug tests and happens to taste really good in pastry.

You see... I like poppy seeds and I'm not afraid to admit it. From just a sprinkling as a topping on bagels to the extremes of makowiec I'm a fan.

But the plants that make poppy seeds also make opium. All you need to know is how to turn a poppy from a nice flower into a drug producing plant.

Years ago Michael Pollan wrote about the problems and issues with poppies. As weird as it sounds it's only illegal to grow poppies if you know how to 'misuse' the plant. Otherwise they're just harmless flowers. You can read all about Opium Made Easy.

I just don't know if you're allowed to grow poppies in your garden after reading the article.

Food: A Food Controversy

Ethical and moral arguments rarely reduce themselves to simple sayings and truisms. This is true when one strays from the simplistic extremes of the arguments and head towards the middle ground. When one moves off to a fringe area... watch out - flame wars are easy to start.

In the world of food one large ethical argument is whether we humans should eat meat. Should we be vegetarian (or even vegan)? Or should we remain omnivorous?

The arguments on each side range from moral (we do or do not have a right to eat animals) through to practical (meat eating for all humans alive isn't sustainable). Most of these arguments are based on the simplistic extremes. One either eats some meat or eats none. Once you head for middle ground it gets even more complicated. For example: If one feels it is okay to eat meat... how much should one eat and how much should one worry about how the animals are raised and looked after?

Once you move away from the simplistic (meat or no meat) into areas of discussion that aren't so clear cut complications emerge.

As for the fringe... well.. there are areas of discussion that seem to invite more passion and controversy.

Take foie gras for instance.

Fattening ducks or gooses beyond 'normal' bounds and limits? Feeding tubes? Forced feeding? It's not hard to see why foie gras is considered beyond the pale in some circles. People who will argue politely over the meat / non-meat debate will get very angry over foie gras.

Is it possible to look objectively at foie gras? Can one get past the idea of what foie gras represents and look at what's really happening and how it happens?

If you are dead set against the idea of foie gras then The Physiology of Foie Gras on Serious Eats won't do anything to change your mind. If you're all for the idea of foie gras then the article will only make you feel better about the production of foie gras.

And if you're not sure one way or the other? If you think you have an open mind and might by willing to let a pro-food website take a look at foie gras? In that case I'm not sure. I don't know if the article works well as a defence of foie gras or if it will turn people against the idea.

My best guess is that for those who aren't sure the article will be like making a coin toss to help with a difficult position. If you ever want to know what choice you want to make you simply assign one choice to heads, the other choice to tails, take a coin and flip it high into the air, and your choice is whatever you hope the coin lands on when it comes back down. Even if you don't know your position on foie gras the article will help. By the time you have read half of it you'll know which way you want the coin to land.

Food: A Modern Golden Goose

I don't drink much. I've never been much one to have much alcohol. I probably have 4 beers, a couple of drinks, and a couple of glasses of wine in an entire year. Obviously I'm no expert on drinks and drinking.

Even I've heard of Grey Goose though. At first it was just a name that kept popping up. People talked about it with semi-reverence. No one ever said it was any better than any other drink. It just seemed to be the new drink that was attached to someone with money and the willingness to part with it. For a while it seemed to be one of those things people bought and drank to show they could buy and drink whatever they wanted.

Considering the history behind so many brands and companies in the business of selling alcohol it's amazing to think that Grey Goose was dreamed up in 1996. It certainly isn't a Canadian Club (1854) or a Courvoisier (1835). Even so the story of Grey Goose and the mind behind its success is very interesting. The Cocktail Creationist tells the story of Sidney Frank and his attempt to recreate the amazing success he had with Grey Goose.

Maybe it's because I don't drink that I keep forgetting how much money is spent on drinks. Fortunes have been made and will continue to be made from the fermented elixirs that sell so well.

Food: Should We Worry About the Banana?

Bananas are a staple fruit for many of us. Remarkably inexpensive and available all year round. There's some special about the banana.

That something special may be the downfall of the banana as we know it today. Which shouldn't be too much of a surprise because the banana we know today, the Cavendish, is not the banana we once knew and loved. Until the middle of the 20th century the banana of choice was the Gros Michel. A fungal infection called Panama disease almost wiped out the banana industry. Now there are warnings that the Cavendish may be in for some trouble. Panama disease has started to wipe out Cavendish bananas in some parts of the world. We may need to find another type of banana to replace the Cavendish.

The alarms have been raised for a while. National Geographic wrote about the problem in 2001. Popular Science covered the issue in 2005. The Smithsonian Magazine also covered bananas in 2005. In 2009 Damn Interesting had an article entitled The Unfortunate Sex Life of the Banana.

If you like bananas, and if you like the taste and texture of the Cavendish - the current banana, then you may end up telling tales about how bananas used to be and how they used to taste. That's if we're lucky. If we're unlucky we'll be telling people about this amazing fruit that was long and curved and yellow and that apparently had a peel that was very slippery.

Food: Controversy in Chocolate

I'm not going to bother about whether dark chocolate is good for you or not. I prefer to think that all chocolate is good for you if taken in moderation.

I'm not going to talk about whether there is too much sugar and confection in our diets. Of course there are. I wouldn't have it any other way.

What I am going to talk about is how chocolate seems to invite controversy. Not for nutritious or dietary reasons though but for purely economic reasons. Let me give two examples.

The first is an ongoing controversy about a hedge fund, Armajaro, that is trying to corner the market for chocolate by buying vast quantities of it. This has been covered by, among others, The Spectator, The New York Times, and even various blogs.

The results are predictable. Chocolate and chocolate products will be more expensive. Chocolate bars and other retail treats will either weight less, cost more, or end up with lower amounts of cocoa products in them. Or some combination of all three. This is already happening and, if Armajaro can corner and influence the market, will continue. So get ready to shell out more money for your chocolate.

The second controversy is a bit older and is over how much chocolate can be worth. The chocolate in particular is not your typical candy bar chocolate but high end high quality chocolate. Just how much is it worth?

And more importantly... how do you know what you're buying is worth what you pay for it?

Back in 2006 on a blog called DallasFood there was a 10 part expose on one of the most expensive brands of chocolate on the market. Noka is a company that sells expensive chocolate. Very expensive chocolate. At the time they could even be called the most expensive chocolates available in the world.

The questions at hand were: Why is their chocolate so expensive? What makes it special and unique? And most importantly: Is it worth the price?

Sadly, 4 years later, the DallasFood.org site has none of the content it had at the time. The 10 part expose is no longer online in it's original location. Like so many things on the web it was not long lived and hasn't survived. Various discussions about the controversy are still online.

A post on Metafiler was entitled Nice margins. The author of the expose posted a synopsis on Chowhound that started not just one long thread on the subject but at least two. One blogger, Robert Synnott, posted about the expose and quickly noticed one commenter that seemed to have been commenting, and defending Noka, on several sites. The Consumerist covered the expose. All in all a good time was had by all.

The best synopsis is on the Straight Dope's forums entitled The emperor's new chocolate which covers the expose, the PR flack, and more.

All in all a wonderful synopsis. However it's only a synopsis.

Luckily even if sites come and go and even if things are no longer online at their original location the internet has a bit of a memory. The original ten part post exposing what Noka was doing and how they were taking good chocolate that was going for $10-$15 per pound, making their own pieces and putting them in fancy boxes to be resold for up to $2000 a pound is available at the internet's Wayback Machine at archive.org.

The first part, with links to all the other parts of the expose, can be found here.

Food: A City's Most Popular New Cuisine

I live in one of the most cosmopolitan and diverse cities in the world. I love Toronto for many many reasons. Not least of which is the choice of food.

I remember going to one of the first Ethiopian restaurants in the city. Now there is many of them and people debate which one is best and which one is most authentic. A couple of years ago I stumbled across a collection of Tibetan restaurants right around the corner from an established Polish neighbourhood. It can be a tough decision when figuring out what type of cuisine to have when you go out to eat. Though people have figured out ways to solve this problem.

But that's just restaurants. One type of dining that hasn't caught on in Toronto (yet) is food trucks. Trucks that pull up and start serving a variety of food to whomever is passing by. Sure we have ice cream trucks and sure we have some street vendors for hotdogs and the trucks that cater to construction sites and factories but food trucks haven't hit here yet. I'm not sure whether it's because of by-laws in place or lack of licenses or just a lack of people wanting to start up food trucks as a way to make some money.

A long time ago (as in less than a decade) if you ran a food truck your best bet to build a repeat customer base was to park in the same places day after day. Find a good spot with lots of repeat customers and you might build a customer base. Now (as in the last few years) technology has come to the rescue. People will track down particular food trucks no matter where they are. And the food trucks have responded by making sure their customers know where they are.

Which leads to sites like Find LA Food Trucks (and their blog) which collects the twitter feeds of the trucks around Los Angeles (when technical issues don't derail them temporarily).

Yes... twitter feeds. The most common technology for trucks to update their current location and status has become twitter. It somehow seems appropriate that one can follow one's favourite truck.

However food trucks, with or without twitter and other technology, can cause problems. Washington D.C. is working out the problems and issues with having flocks of new food trucks appear on the roads. Inside D.C.'s Food-Truck Wars gives the background and the current situation in a city where food trucks have started to become popular. I just wonder if, or when, Toronto will have to start dealing with the same issues.

Food: But is it Still Bad For You?

One of the eternal unending battles over food will always be whether fast food is good for you or not. Should we cook for ourselves? Is there something inherently wrong with prepared food? Is it bad that we've managed to have so much food so cheaply available?

One part of the fast food battle that I will concede on is that fast food rarely looks or tastes good. Luckily there is help available. Fancy Fast Food (tagline: Yeah, It's Still Bad For You - But See How Good it Can Look!) takes fast food and transforms it into amazing looking creations. The trick seems to be to take several items from a particular fast food restaurant and then combine, alter, bend, fold, and/or mutilate until... voila... something that at least looks much more appetizing than the original.

It's quite amazing what people can do with fast food. After taking in Fancy Fast Food you may never look at cheap and inexpensive food quite the same way ever again.

Food: Misunderstanding Science Misrepresents Food

If you haven't heard the story of the McDonalds Hamburger that's over a decade old let me send you off to read the original story.

Now I don't know what you think of the story but I find it absolutely incredible that someone who is teaching kids about nutrition can be so wrong. Yes... Karen Hanrahan has a McDonalds hamburger from 1996. Yes... it's preserved and not rotten after more than a decade. Yet from that she spouts things like:

Ladies, Gentleman, and children alike – this is a chemical food. There is absolutely no nutrition here.

Not one ounce of food value. Or at least value for why we are eating in the first place.

Or how about this one:

McDonalds fills an empty space in your belly. It does nothing to nourish the cell, it is not a nutritious food. 

Is it just me or am I the only one who thinks that a piece of cooked food allowed to cool and dry off and left in dry environment will stay self preserved for much longer than you might expect. To me this isn't amazing or shocking. It's expected.

As for McDonalds being chemical food... that's your proof? No chemistry or analysis? Just uneducated and unproven claims? And what the heck is "food value" anyway? Is she saying there is no nutrition at all in a McDonalds hamburger? That there are no useful calories?

Please don't let people like her anywhere near my kid. I'd rather have the educated teach the young instead of the overly reactionary.

Let me debunk this in two ways. First lets consider McDonalds and the quality of their food. McDonalds does more than you might expect to make sure their food is of the highest quality. You may not like the results but you can't fault McDonalds for not taking food quality and safety seriously.

I'm not suggesting that McDonalds has our best nutritional interests at heart. That's not what I said. I said they take food quality and safety seriously. Not only because it's how they work with suppliers, McDonalds pioneered the concept of working with providers to deliver a guaranteed profit on goods sold as long as they were produced and prepared to McDonalds standards. But also because McDonalds knows how bad a public relations nightmare an outbreak of unsafe food would be.

It's in their corporate best interest to keep their food as safe as possible. It may not be the most nutritional meal on the planet but that's not what their selling. They are selling burgers. With patties made of nothing but lean beef. With toppings and a bun.

And for that we assume it's the worst meal on the planet and scare our kids away with bogus claims that it is "chemical food"?

No wonder I fear for our kids. It's not them I worry about. It's the people who educate them.

As for the burger "self-preserving" itself... may I turn things over to J. Kenji Lopez-Alt at Serious Eats with The Burger Lab: The Myth of the 12-Year Old McDonald's Hamburger and The Burger Lab: Revisiting the Myth of The 12-Year Old McDonald's Burger That Just Won't Rot (Testing Results!). Who dispels the myth that McDonalds burgers do this because they something special. Any thin beef patty that is cooked and allowed to dry out quickly will resist rotting.

Amazing how a quick experiment (with different burgers both homemade and from fast food restaurants) can completely overturn over the top unproven rhetoric anytime.

Now can we get back to enjoying our food please? Or at least discussing food issues based on facts and science and not the random wailings of someone who should know better?

Food: When Not To Take Forwarded Emails Seriously

It's been making the rounds again. An email telling people how to eat fruit. Apparently we don't know how to eat properly and we need to be told. In this case we're being told to eat fruit on an empty stomach.

It didn't pop into my radar again via email. It caught my attention when more that a few people took the email and popped it into their blog. It seemed to have become popular again late in 2009 and early in 2010. Here are just a few examples of how this long running email is now part of the web.

What really caught my attention was one attempt to debunk the bad science in the email. Always eat fruits before a meal?? The science behind false claims by Akshat Rathi is a wonderful piece. Still nothing quite beats Snopes for getting to the bottom of the whole affair. It turns out the original was written in 1998 and, as in many of these rogue emails on health, the authority quoted in it was at best a charlatan and at worst a fraud.

I don't know if we'll ever get rid of bad and spurious advice. I'm not sure science and medicine will ever come up with the 'best' diet and the 'healthiest' foods. Even if there was one perfect diet that provided perfect nutrition I'd still be wandering from it to enjoy many of the culinary wonders the world offers.

And I'll eat them whether my stomach is full or empty!

Food: The Perfect French Fry - part 2

Okay... so what happens when an overly equipped techno-foodie-trained-chef decides to create the perfect french fry?

Well for one thing the goal wouldn't be to emulate McDonalds.

No... the goal would be to create the best french fry ever. To scientifically check and recheck results. To apply unexpected tools and techniques. Such as sandpaper. And for anyone who wanted to look into the science and technology of the matter there would be a bibliography.

I'm not kidding about this. Don't believe me? Then go read David Arnold's The Quest for French Fry Supremacy, Part 1, and Part 2: Blanching Armageddon at Cooking Issues.

Oh... and in case you want to look deeper at the wonderfully insanity that comes with having way too much technology in the kitchen and you are looking for a place to start reading Cooking Issues may I suggest the four post epic on cooking a whole turkey - part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4.

Why is the Turkey series epic? Well... after determining the best temperature and the optimal cooking time they (and I can't believe I'm typing this) bone the turkey and replace it's bones with aluminum tubes that circulate hot cooking oil. All so that the turkey is cooking from the inside before it is then also immersed in hot oil to cook it optimally.

Yes... to make the perfect turkey they make a bionic turkey. It's well worth the read.

Food: The Perfect French Fry - part 1

Say what you like about fast food. You may disapprove. You may think that the food is bad for people. You may think it's an affront to cuisine and good eating. But you have to admit it's never been so easy for people to get fed for so little money. Inexpensive calories for anyone at anytime.

Plus many of those calories are very tasty.

One of the standards for tasty and inexpensive cuisine, possibly the gold standard for the longest time, is the McDonalds french fry. Crisp yet fluffy. Hot but not overly greasy. Remarkably dependable no matter where you go. With so many people loving McDonalds french fries you had to know there would be imitators.

It turns out it takes a lot of work to imitate the golden arches. J. Kenji Lopez-Alt went on a quest to create the perfect french fry at home. A fry that was as close to a McDonalds fry as possible. The quest involved industrial espionage (getting samples of still frozen McDonalds fries for analysis) and the realization that some of the steps that the person at home can avoid may help the process (Freezing before the second frying, like McDonalds does to get the fries to the restaurants, helps a great deal). The result is The Burger Lab: Hot to Make Perfect Thin and Crisp French Fries over at Serious Eats.

Food: In Soviet Russia Tea Leaves Brew You...

Tea is the most popular beverage in the world after plain water. Not bad for a drink that Douglas Adams referred to as "dried leaves boiled in water" in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

When I think of tea my mind drifts to two completely different tea cultures. The English and the Japanese Tea Ceremony. Two very different ways of enjoying those dried leaves boiled in water. Considering how popular tea is it isn't surprising that there are many different tea cultures around the world.  Anywhere people live there seems to be a particular way of preparing and drinking tea.

One way I didn't know about is the Russian way of preparing and drinking tea. In case you think that the Russians just take their dried leaves and boil them in water you're in for a shock. According to the Russian Tea HOWTO version 2 by Daniel Nagy the tea should never be boiled:

Third rule: never cook the tea leaves. The first contact of the tea leaves with water should happen right after the boiling of the latter. Neither before, nor long after. If you cook the tea leaves, you will obtain a liquid almost, but not entirely, unlike tea, fit for leather tanning, rather than drinking.

Yes... not boiling tea is rule number three. The HOWTO goes on to explain the primary difference between Russian tea and other tea - zavarka or tea concentrate. One of the secrets to Russian tea is to prepare a concentrate and then dilute it with hot water. Daniel goes on to detail the steps of making the rather dangerous zavarka. Dangerous? I'll let him explain:

Never drink the zavarka undiluted. It has a strong narcotic effect, causing intense heartbeat, hallucinations and restlessness.

As you learn the steps to recreate Russian tea you will learn a bit of Russian, the difference between boiled and raw water, some history, and much about the drink that helps keep Russian hackers awake at their keyboards. Enjoy.

Food: The Language of Food

Occasionally I come across orphan web sites that I hope never fade away. The Language of Food by Dan Jurafsky is a blog that contains just four posts. Four long extraordinary posts on the history of food written over four months in 2009.

Illustrated, well researched, and completely fascinating glimpses into the history and language of food. Dig in and enjoy.

Magnificent Obsessions: Eating a City and Eating the World

Here's a typical conversation that can happen in large cities with lots of different restaurants. It starts with:

"Where do you want to eat?"

Typically followed by:

"I don't know. What type of food do you feel like?"

In 1989 a group in Toronto decided to solve the questions of "where do you want to eat?". They'd eat at every restaurant in the city, one a week, in alphabetical order. Every year they take the Toronto Yellow Pages restaurant section and continue from whichever restaurant they last visited. The Serial Diners are still going strong. Their agenda shows that as of July 2010 they had reached the letter K - kniblets LMT to be exact.

Their site has the rules, and copies of several articles that chronicle the story of the group. If you own a restaurant in Toronto which starts with the letter L then be prepared. On a seemingly random Friday a large group of friendly diners will descend on your restaurant unannounced.

That solves the question of where to eat. What about the type of food?

Well three intrepid diners living in New York are trying to systematically handle that problem. They are going to eat the cuisine of the United Nations. Again the approach is to take the countries in alphabetical order. But they aren't going to fly around the world. They don't need to do that. After all they live in New York City. Home of the United Nations and one of the most diverse cities on the planet - at least in terms of cuisine.

So, to use their tag line they will be "eating the UN, A-Z without ever leaving NYC". The wonderfully named Confined Nomads are not quite as proscribed in their choice of restaurants. They don't have to visit every Chinese restaurant. They will jut try and do a representative sampling of the cuisine of China. Their journey, which as of now has reached Columbia, is filled with discussions on how much is representative and insights into the cuisines and restaurants they've encountered.

Being Canadian I decided to check out what the confined nomads came up with for Canadian cuisine. Canada is blessed with being a large country where we freely eat and enjoy the foods of the world. Toronto is probably even more diverse in terms of ethnic and regional restaurants than even New York. But we've been so busy eating the cuisine of the rest of the world that I'm not sure we've created a unique cuisine of our own. So I was a little hesitant to find out what represented Canada in New York City.

Canada, according to our restaurants, is TPoutine (and who doesn't love the concept of poutine), Tim Horton's Donuts (though they didn't like the coffee. Must be all that over roasted and burnt starbuckian crud the USA calls coffee. At least it isn't the watered down barely dark brown water they used to serve in the US), and The Ontario Bar. They didn't make it to Mile End which is a Montreal style deli.

Poutine, Donuts, and an inviting bar with Canadian beer and Whiskey? That's good enough representation for me!

Science: No Busy Bees?

There is a debate on whether we can feed the world or not. As long as food is as plentiful as it is now we have a chance to avoid not having enough food.

If we start having problems growing food then all bets are off. That makes what's happening to the bees very serious. Bee Catastrophe" 1/3 of Colonies Died This Winter, Worries Grow About Terminal Decline is not a good sign.

Can we Feed the World?

It doesn't seem like a simple question. Can we feed everyone on the planet? All 6 billion people?

There may be a more difficult question. Can we feed the 9 billion who will be on the planet? The population of the globe is still increasing but it looks like the growth is slowing. We'll hit a peak and then the population will actually drop. The number for the predicted population peak keeps changing depending on who's doing the math. Let's stick with 9 billion in the middle of this century.

Can we feed them all?

One thought is that we may be able to. Especially if we want to do it in a sustained and fossil fuel limited manner. Can We Feed the World? More Importantly Will We Choose To? is an excerpt from the book A Nation of Farmers.

Another thought is that we aren't feeding people now and we may not be able to feed the upcoming 9 billion. Jules Pretty's article in the National Review Can Ecological Agriculture Feed Nine Billion People? strongly tends towards us not being able to feed everybody without massive changes to food production.

Yet another thought is that we already can feed people. Not just the current population but also the 9 billion of the future. Josh Viertel's article in The Atlantic Why Big Ag Won't Feed the World tells us we already produce enough to feed 11 billion.

If the world is truly producing enough food then the problem is that it isn't getting distributed well. To quote Josh Viertel "it's a global justice problem". In which case the profit motive isn't going to help much. Profits and other corporate concerns tend not to align with problems of justice or fairness.

If it is a global justice problem that leads me to another thought. In more and more countries it is been decided that health care is a right of the citizen. Even the U.S.A. is slowly moving towards providing basic healthcare to all Americans. Most of the rest of the world has decided that being healthy is a right of citizenship and that healthcare shouldn't be dependent on earnings or net worth.

What if we slowly move towards the idea of every citizen having the right to enough food to live? I'm not advocating this. Yet. I'll admit that it's an intriguing idea. How can one have life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness if one is starving?

Think that's a deluded dream of a utopia that can't be reached? It may not be as farfetched as you think. In fact it is already happening. The City That Ended Hunger by Frances Moore Lappe tells of the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte where food is a right of citizenship. It's not just about providing food for those who don't have any. It's also about restructuring how food is distributed to give people the ability to buy fresh local produce and help local farmers where possible.

Maybe one way to help end hunger and help put in place sustainable agriculture is to guarantee people the right not to go hungry. Is that idea so crazy it just might work?

Magnificent Obsessions: From a Cube to a Pizza

There are people in the world who have the energy and drive to create magnificent obsessions. Jeff Varasano is a person who has obsessed magnificently at least twice in his life.

In the 80s I picked up a small book that detailed a method of solving the Rubik's Cube in under 45 seconds. Jeff Conquers the Cube in 45 Seconds - and you can to (also out as Conquer the Cube in 45 Seconds) was how I learned to solve the cube quickly. At the time most of the early published solutions were based on solving the cube layer by layer. You formed the bottom layer, filled in the middle, and then finished with the top layer. Jeff's version was to work from the corners in. The technique also had the option of simpler bits (sections that you could complete using only a couple of combinations but you may have to do them several times in a row) or more complicated bits (solving the same sections in fewer moves but you had to remember more move combinations). His method was good enough at the time to let him set a world record of 24.67 seconds at the age of 14.

I can blame thank Jeff for writing the book that I absorbed and memorized and that gave me some serious pre-computer geek cred. Everyone else in my high school who learned the cube used clunkier methods and they couldn't compete with me.

That's obsession number one. AN obsession that hasn't made a lasting impact on the web except that his method is still talked about and listed in various comparisons of how to do the cube. Jeff's second obsession, the one that has left an impact on the web, happened because he moved from New York to Atlanta.

Now there's nothing wrong with Atlanta. Great city. Great people. But... according to Jeff the pizza in Atlanta is awful. Nothing like the thin, quick cooked New York city pies he loved growing up. So what's a person to do?

Obsessively try to recreate New York pizza of course. While documenting every step of the way. From which flour and water. To how to get the dough just right. To which toppings to use. To how to jury-rig home ovens to get hot enough (he doesn't give details... but the secret is to bypass the locking mechanism and to use the high heat cleaning cycle). It's all there on his site. With links to what he considers the best pizzerias in the country, lots of pictures of how the perfect pie should look, and helpful advice on how to do it yourself.

I stumbled across Jeff's pizza page a couple of years ago when he was in full obsession mode but before he opened a restaurant in downtown Atlanta to finally bring good pizza to his new hometown. Varasano's Pizzeria is the obvious conclusion to this second obsession. Luckily he's kept all the details on how to create the perfect pie online for all of us to consider trying out ourselves.

I wonder if Jeff has another act to play out now that his restaurant is open? Will he be happy running his restaurant and sharing the perfect pizza? Or will he start obsessing about something else? Only time will tell.

The Senses: Not Just a Matter of Taste

I've posted about taste before. Writing about the spices we use in our foods. Spices are just the additions to what we eat. From a nutritional point of view they have almost no value. The bulk of our nutrition comes from the staple foods that make up our diet.

What we eat now and how our collective diets have changed over time is a fascinating topic. Many issues that we face are tied to what we eat. There is controversy at the moment as to whether or not corn sweeteners are a cause of the "obesity epidemic". People are also worried about sustainability and the food we eat. There are many issues concerning our eating habits.

Policy and planning decisions are better informed when there is a way to look into the details of what we eat. Especially when we can see trends over time.

There are resources that have some of these details. The US Department of Agriculture publishes a periodical appropriately named Amber Waves and in the March 2010 issue there is an article looking at the last 100 years of food availability data from the Economic Research Service. Tracking a Century of American Eating gives an overview of the wealth of data that's been collected.

The trends dramatically show how dietary habits have changed. For example:

• In 1910 only 12% of fruit consumed was processed. In 2008 that increased to 49% of all fruit. At the same time the number of pounds of fruit per person per year increased from 177 to 251. Who says we aren't eating our fruit.
• The growth in the amount of cheese consumed per capita has increased dramatically. From 11.4 pounds per person per year in 1970 to over 31 pounds in 2008.
• Chicken consumption has almost risen above beef consumption. Chicken is so cheap and plentiful that it's difficult to understand that it was a luxury item before factory farms and modern agriculture. "A chicken in every pot" was a promise of better times. Now chicken is not considered anything special. It's a staple.

A slightly more detailed look at the last 100 years of food data in the US was written up in 2000 in another USDA periodical - Food Review. The dryly named Major Trends in U.S. Food Supply, 1909-1999 (pdf) is not a description of changing food habits. Instead it is a collection of graphs. From the drop in the percentage of disposable income spent on food (from 24% down to under 12%), to a comparison of the decline of milk drinking and the increase in soda consumption, the graphs can start endless discussions.

What conclusions do the number present? What changed? Which trends are positive and which are negative? Food consumption has changed radically, is there any way of influencing and altering the trends moving forward? The discussions can go on ad infinitum.

If an overview isn't enough the USDA has created a website of the Data Sets where you can chart, compare, and download the Information on Food Availability and other topics to analyze yourself.

Of course even with all this information at our disposal there will still be disagreements about what we should do concerning food. But I'd rather have an informed discussion where we disagree on what the numbers mean than an uninformed one where we can't even agree on the numbers.