A cookie.

One theory to account for this is that we have not surpassed our ancestors physiologically. Our brain does not know how to tell us when to stop eating junk because the subject never came up among our Cro-Magnon ancestors, who were programmed to eat anything that didn’t eat them first and were equipped to store fat for times of famine.

We can’t explain away our almost desperate yearning for a cookie by claiming to possess a sweet tooth. A more plausible theory is that when we are starving, inborn instinct makes us seek out high-calorie, high-fat, quick-energy foods.

Imagining we are starving is a relative thing, especially when we know there is a cookie or candy bar nearby.

Seeing is Believing

Television is another phenomenon our ancestors didn’t have to contend with. The excitement of seeing a pizza flashing on the screen alerts our appetite control center, which in turn sends fast and furious messages to the salivary glands to get ready for the feast. EAT? Is the question. NOW is the answer. NO is not even an option. Hungry is the consequence of the sighting of food, even if we have barely rested our fork from the prvious meal.

An Appetite for Sugar

Hunger is not the same as appetite and has almost nothing to do with taste. Hunger relates to a drop in the level of blood sugar and the physical need for food.  Appetite relates to the desire for food, and taste is the ability to to differentiate one food from another.

None of this thinking goes even the smallest step to explaining why we think we are hungry so soon after eating Chinese food. One hypothesis is that the meal doesn’t end properly — meaning there is no chocolate cake and no ice cream. We find ourselves (unless we are of Chinese heritage,) with a subconscious sense of loss and longing. Naturally this feeling of deprivation leads us to think we are hungry when in fact we are just being peevish.

A cookie usually solves the problem.

A food label must fulfill three criteria:

• It must be Truthful
• It must be Verifiable
• It must be Enforceable

So here’s the first problem: If the label on a genetically modified food is truthful, it must state that there is no evidence to say this food is safe to eat. In the interest of balanced scientific accuracy, it must also say there is no evidence to suggest it is unsafe to eat.

Therefore, the only way to tell the truth is to declare on the label that this food may or may not be safe to eat.

The verifiable part also is a bit of dilemma. There is no practical, economical test that can measure the presence of a protein derived from a genetically modified ingredient. This situation can be compared with having sex without, well, you know what… in other words there is no issue.

It is rather like asserting something might be there, or it might not there, but if it is there, it doesn’t present a problem.  In yet other words, the house may or may not be haunted, but if it is, the undetectable ghost is really friendly.

The enforceable issue presents the biggest predicament of all. If the label says that this food may or may not be safe because something that might be there might not be there, but if it is there, we must plead with a government agency to enforce a ruling that something that is not detectable is O.K. to eat.

Sounds like good work if you can get it. Rumor has it that there would be paid vacations if such a job existed.

I first noticed this phenomenon when David Stockton, former Secretary of the Treasury, denounced Ronald Reagan’s economic policy by declaring. “If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it probably is a duck.”

Clearly, without coming right out and saying so, he was implying the proposed budget was a dead duck. Stockton was fired soon after delivering his shockingly disloyal opinion.

Dead ducks are not what any one wants — even as economic indicators. Sitting ducks are something else again. (A variation on this duck business lately has become, “If it looks like a duck and talks like a duck — shoot it.”)

Some time ago a terrible controversy about apples erupted. There was furious suspicion of behind-the-scenes hanky panky. Yet another scandal had surfaced.

Washington State Fuji Apple

It had been revealed on the Sunday evening program, 60 Minutes that apple growers in Washington State were using Alar to promote the growth of their fruit.

A representative of the US Food & Drug Administration was invited to cower before star correspondent and unofficial finger wagger Mike Wallace, who more or less accused the government of planning to poison all the innocent little children throughout the land.

The first words that tumbled from the lips of the hapless scientist were: This is a par-a-dox…” He got out not one word further. He had aroused the ire of the nation that thought, (incorrectly as it turned out), he was belittling the problem by describing the impending disaster as simply “a pair of ducks.”

In so doing he cooked his goose. Apple pie, the salt of the earth, was clearly endangered. The nation howled.

As voters’ confidence in Congress continues to unravel, it is reassuring to learn there are still a few (food) visionaries in the world…

Create Jobs for USA

Starbucks is planning to do something inspirational to restore our faith in our institutions.

Here’s the idea: Starbucks Coffee Co. next month (November 1) is planning to ask customers to pay $5 or more toward a national fund for community business lending in a move aimed at creating jobs.

The Seattle-based coffee chain is partnering with the Opportunity Finance Network (OFN), to launch the “Create Jobs for USA program.

And, starting Nov. 1, Create Jobs for USA will begin accepting donations online or at Starbucks’ nearly 6,800 locations throughout the U.S.

Donors who give $5 or more will receive a red-white-and-blue wristband with the word “indivisible” inscribed.

Starbucks said all of the proceeds will go to the OFN to help fund loans to businesses. The coffee company also will contribute $5 million in seed money from its Starbucks Foundation.

“Small businesses are the backbone of America, employing more than half of all private sector workers — but this critical jobs engine has stalled,” said Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks. “We’ve got to thaw the channels of credit so that community businesses can start hiring again.”

I’m sending in my contribution right now. How about you?

Read more:

• http://nrn.com/article/starbucks-partners-job-creation-program?ad=policy&utm_source=MagnetMail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=ichalmers@earthlink.net&utm_content=NRN-News-NRNam-10-04-11&utm_campaign=A%20look%20at%20Chili%27s%20new%20ads#ixzz1ZoaDR6rs

Professor Brian Wansick, PhD, author of the fascinating book, Mindless Eating and website, has something to say about this subject. Wansick also is the John Dyson Endowed Chair in the Applied Economics and Management Department at Cornell University, where he directs the Cornell Food and Brand Lab. He has designed and conducted over 250 studies, written over 100 academic articles, and made over 200 research presentations to governments and governors, to top universities and companies, to culinary institutes and research institutes on every continent but Antarctica.

But what exactly does he do? He describes his work this way:

Using precise methods of weighting foods eaten or discarded, [I work with] psychologists [who] test the accuracy of food claims and consumers’ perceptions.

It takes 3,500 extra calories to equal one pound weight gain. It doesn’t matter if we eat these extra 3,500 calories in one week or gradually over the entire year. Just 10 calories a day–one stick of Doublemint gum or three small Jelly Belly jelly beans–will make you a pound more portly one year from today. Only three Jelly Bellys a day! Fortunately, the same thing happens in the opposite direction.

Mindless Eating is filled with fascinating fallibilities that affect our eating decisions even when we think we would never fall for foolish tricks that lead us to gain weight by eating mindlessly.

If you’re interested in becoming a food researcher, check out employment opportunities at the Consumer Behavior program at Stanford University, the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, the University of Illinois Hospitality Management Program, the Penn State Department of Nutritional Science, University of Maryland College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, eLab at Vanderbilt University, and the U.S. Army Natick Labs. This field is growing, so make sure to browse for consumer-behavior research programs on the Internet.

Crack An Egg

I’m not entirely sure whether well-intentioned doctors fully understand the mind-freezing impact of prescribing, “No more eggs, no more butter or fries or booze…” What is left? Rien! Nada! Nothing! But wait, wait..do tell me…

I’ve just discovered something important. Under the heading, “Cracking the Myth,” the Egg Board’s web site tells us:

“Many Americans have shied away from eggs – despite their taste, value, convenience and nutrition – for fear of dietary cholesterol. However, more than 40 years of research have shown that healthy adults can eat eggs without significantly impacting their risk of heart disease.”

And now, according to new United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutrition data, eggs are lower in cholesterol than previously recorded. It recently reviewed the nutrient composition of standard large eggs, and results show the average amount of cholesterol in one large egg is a mere 185 mg, a 14 percent decrease from eggs of the distant past.

I’ve also long held the view that butter is good for you. It makes your hair curl and your teeth shine. Contrary to what many modern health experts believe, “Butter is actually good for you,” says Dr. William Campbell Douglass II, editor of The Douglass Report,  a newsletter dedicated to debunking common medical myths. Because butter is actually full of nutrients that are good for the heart — including vitamin A, a vital antioxidant, and lecithin, which helps the body metabolize cholesterol and fats.

Julia Child

Wise woman, Julia Child, acknowledging a gasp from her live audience explained, “If you are worried about using all this butter, you can substitute heavy cream.”

While readily recognizing that everyone can find someone to agree with — whatever anyone already thinks — I still can’t help thinking that butter which comes from milk from contented

Contented Cows courtesy of Dmitry Kalinovsky

cows who live in the country must surely be better for the soul than margarine, which is manufactured in the city from chemicals including terribly ‘bad-for-you’ trans fat.

Will all this un-magical thinking lead to a ban of mother’s milk, loaded as it is with ”bad” things including cholesterol, saturated fat and sugar?

As for fries: it might be a good idea not to SUPERSIZE.

And addressing the subject of booze, I remember a little story about Mark Twain.

Mark Twain, 1907

Upon returning to the United Stated, a customs officer asked Twain if he had anything to declare.

“No.” said Twain, nonchalantly. “Just clothing.”

“Open your suitcase,” suspiciously demanded the customs official.

When the case was opened, the official discovered a bottle of bourbon and turned to Twain, asking sternly, “What is this, Sir.”

“Ah…,” said Twain — “That is my nightcap.”

Huge steaks are regarded in the United States with the same near reverence as the flag and the Constitution. Red meat is our national food just as Morocco has couscous, Austria has wiener schnitzel, Brazil has fejoada, and Russians boast of their borscht, Greeks are mad for moussaka, Koreans crave kimchi. In Japan, its sushi; in Thailand, pad Thai. Robert Burns wrote an ode to Scottish haggis. Italy has pasta for every occasion.  France sidesteps the issue of national dish by declaring with a massive shrug, that every French dish is better than anyone else’s and the rest of us are too cowed to argue the point.

Our eating behavior influences our anatomy, Physiology and the evolution of the human race itself.  Eating, in short, is inseparable from the behavior and the biology of the human species and our adaptation to the climate conditions that vary from tropical heat to Arctic cold.

Thus:  you may choose to explore a career creating new food flavors and if so check into NASFT, the National Association of Specialty Food Trade www.specialtyfood.com/nasft and IFF International Flavors and Fragrances, creator and manufacturer of flavors and fragrances. See the company profile, product listing, and contact form www.iff.com

“What we eat and why we choose the foods that make up our daily diet; the ceremonies that surround food; how it underscores our sameness and differences; its mythic and symbolic importance; the joy of plenty; the fear of famine and deprivation — all are occasions for reflections on the human condition.

Why do we tolerate the prevalence of widespread hunger in a world of abundance? What roles do culturally determined food preferences or the power of science, politics, or global trade play in determining who will be well fed and who will starve?”

There is an unending trove of material available, if you want to enliven your cooking classes with some food stories, or enrich your copy if you write about food, or even develop a syllabus for a new  high school or college level course.  For example, this is how I approached a unique series of gastronomy lessons.  I developed some menus and used the prism of food to talk about several areas that I personally found interesting.  Happily the students did too. This is one of my menus:

Oysters Garnished with Sevruga Caviar

Roast Beef

Or

Spiced Crispy Chilean Sea Bass in Ginger-Cardamom Broth

Locally Grown, Organic Mixed Green Salad Seasoned with Salt & Pepper

Lemon Juice and Virgin Olive Oil Dressing

Red Wine and Imported Sparking Water

Cheese Platter and  French Bread

Flourless Chocolate Cake

Tea  or Coffee

This menu provides the framework for discussing the following:

The history of oysters: trade issues involved in banning of imported caviar

The carnivore and the vegetarian diet

Role of chefs in boycotting endangered fish i.e. bass and politics of foie gras

The discovery of fire and its role in the evolution of the human race

Organic farming and genetically engineered crops

The impact of citrus fruit on the global economy

The symbolism of olive oil

The history of the spice trade

The physiology of taste and smell

An examination of issues related to appetite and hunger

The changing face of wine and the influence of advertising and packaging

Water: the most vital issue facing the world

The reasons behind the recent interest in artisanal cheeses and slow foods

The history of bread

Flourless chocolate cake as it relates to fads and trends

The impact of tea and coffee on the health of the consumer

The inevitability of change and present and future impact of technology on upscale dining.

What fun!

If we had to identify the most obvious food trend it would almost certainly be green. We must eat green to get in the pink. We are deeply obsessed with healthy food.

Right.

Why is corn on the cob good but popcorn bad? (Garrison Keillor observed, “Sex is good but sweet corn is better.”)

We are ignoring dire warnings about the evil of salt. But. Sea salt was prominently listed on 2,621 European product launches last year. Here, lawmakers hint darkly they will soon ban salt in restaurants. O.K. We’ll have fleur de sel instead.

Q.  Why do we love the In-N-Out  restaurant chain?

A.   Because it is healthier. Really? Eat This Not That (Rodale Books, 2008) says: ”The In-N-Out Chocolate Shake might be made with real ice cream but it still has as much saturated fat as six burgers!” Yikes.

Americans eat 818 hot dogs every second! Every second! Hot dogs are rarely described as healthful or gourmet, but New York Magazine reports: restaurants are bridging the gap between “dirty water dogs” sold on street corners and high-quality cuisine. Say “Good Dog” to green $10 dogs with organic, healthy toppings.

Why oh why do we love Jell-O? Why do we adore potato chips? Why do we crave pizza? Macaroni and cheese annual sales are up 25 percent to $802 million. None of these are health foods. They are not even green.

Is it kind to kill a chicken humanely just so we can eat it?

Why do we dote on donuts and bagels? Is it because they are hole foods?

The product most frequently bought in the supermarket is diet soda. Why? Possibly because it contains O. It’s  just a cool can of fizz.

Why are we addicted to chocolate? Scientists have recently decoded the DNA of single estate chocolate. Molé

An article published in the Science of Food and Agriculture allows us to consider the astonishing suggestion that beers containing lots of hops may (or presumably may not?) promote better bone health. This theorizing advances a hypothesis based on a hypothetical. Nice try though.

In a recent poll, three out of four adults said that they were trying to eat healthier than they did two years ago yet research reveals menu items that are identified as being healthy are some of the least popular items. When fast food chains set up a salad bar in a prominent location what happens? Sales of cheeseburgers soar.

Nearly 20 percent of consumers say they’d be more likely to eat out for breakfast on weekdays if options were more healthful. Restaurateurs are skeptical. (This kind of thinking parallels the astute observation by a sports commentator who opined: “If it had gone in, it would have been a goal). Duh!

Those who worry about our health warn us that French fries are junk food but mashed potatoes with butter and cream are very good. Indeed, many consider a decent size serving of mashed potatoes is one that will accomodate both buttocks.

The sugar in cookies is bad. The sugar in honey is good. Is it true this is the same sugar as that found in high fructose corn syrup?

Everything cooked at home by Mom is good, even if this means Mom tossed a box of spaghetti into boiling (salted) water, unscrewed a jar of pasta sauce and sprinkled the pasta with “cheese” from a green container. This is a homemade meal because it was made at home even though processed food is bad.

Everything that comes in a can or from a freezer or is processed in any way is not good even though canned and frozen veggies are processed the moment they are harvested and “fresh” food may have languished in the supermarket before being put in the home refrigerator for several days, losing nutrients every second of every day. Even so all fresh vegetables are good. Cauliflower is particularly good, though it consists of 90 percent water. Cucumber may be cool and iceberg lettuce even cooler but these vegetables are mostly shaped green water.

Frozen fish is not as good as fresh fish though fish, frozen at sea the moment it is caught is fresher than fresh fish that has been sloshing around in the hold of a ship for several hours.

Some folk are willing indeed eager to pay a huge amount of money for raw unpasteurized milk that is truly terribly bad for their health. The same people refuse to accept the idea of irradiated food though many thousands die from preventable food born illnesses every year.

We throw away tons and tons of food fearing hungry people might sue us if they eat the food that we eat when we could quite easily provide them with a pencil and politely ask them to sign a waiver.

Worldwide four people are killed by sharks.  Everyone in the world is afraid of sharks.

During the past 25 years there have been 139 deaths from mad cow disease. The odds of contracting mad cow disease are one in 10 billion. This doesn’t mean the risk is zero but it is as close to zero as you can get.

There has been a huge increase in those who choose to be vegetarian. Weekday vegetarians are all the rage. Meatless Mondays is an idea that is galloping forward. Wellness advocates denounce the use of additives in our food. Additives prevent the salt from clumping, the ice cream from crystallizing and prevents the eruption of bugs of bugs in the flour.

A homemade cake contains the same ingredients as a cake bought from a bakery or baked from ingredients found in a box.

Some folk prefer to eat an apple with a worm in it as this proves it has been organically grown without pesticides.

Life expectancy in Japan is 86 years. Japanese people snack on a bar made of dried sardines and slivered almonds. Maybe it just feels like 86 years?

Life expectancy in Switzerland is 84 years. Could it be due to the chocolate and fondue?

Life expectancy in France is 84. years. Could it be due to the butter, red wine and garlic?

Life expectancy in Italy is 83.5 years. Could it be due to the pasta and pizza?

Life expectancy in the United States is 80.8 years. Could it be due to all that bacon? In the U.S. there is bacon, bacon everywhere. Even, it is rumored in the new Coke… Bacon mania marches on with Bakon vodka.  How long before we swoon for male underarm bacon antiperspirant?

Tapas taps into the need for more being less or is it the other way round?

14,408 people are murdered every year, many by their spouse. So let’s ban marriage for everyone.  Lets all live in sin, eat what we want when we want it, be happy and live for ever.

Relativity (1953) by M.C. Escher

I first met Sylvia in her gorgeous townhouse with the sun roof perched on the top floor. She was a major figure in the food world back then. Her business was thriving. There were many slim young women looking frantically busy and racing up and down stairs like an M.C. Escher drawing. Barbara Kafka was at that meeting and so were several others who became lifelong friends and acquaintances.

I was invited to the gathering on the strength of having written dozens and dozens of little single subject cookbooks. Several million of them were sold in so-called “gourmet” shops at the beginning of the right worshipful Julia Child era.

I learned the purpose of the meeting with Sylvia and Barbara and six other women was to create a new organization to be named Les Dames d’Escoffier. It was the brainchild of Carol Brock who was then food editor of The New York Daily News. The charter was to stipulate a membership limited to 100 carefully vetted women who earned their living as food or wine professionals.

Carol Brock was the first president of the group. Sylvia, the second. I was elected the third president.

Sara Moulton was then president of the Women’s Culinary Alliance, a vibrant gathering of young women. This organization had no limits on membership and no rules beyond getting together to expand their food knowledge.

I proposed to the Board of Directors of Les Dames that we merge the two groups. My idea had been we “old broads” could lend our mentoring acumen to the young folk. The suggestion received a unanimous and resounding NO vote.

I stayed with The Dames for a while, but ultimately decided to join the founding members of IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals). This organization started with a handful of cooking school teachers and grew to an association of nearly 4,000 mostly women from 39 countries. Its numbers have declined in the last couple of years but it remains a powerhouse of media-minded professionals.

Les Dames meantime maintained its original exclusivity and has also become an international organization.

Sylvia’s was a wise voice throughout the expansion of women’s roles in the food industry. I greatly admired her.” The only fault she had was always, always being late for absolutely everything: meetings, dinners, events of all kinds. I once waited for her for an hour and a half in a restaurant to which she had invited me for dinner. I left as she was arriving, breathlessly hurtling through the entrance. She seemed astonished that I was so p…d off.

We never arranged to have dinner together again though we stayed in touch for several years. Whenever the phone rang after 11:30 P.M., I always knew it was Sylvia calling about an urgent matter.

Looking back, it seems in character that she stayed on earth late enough to celebrate her 92nd birthday. She really was a grand old “dame.”

Coffee Tasting Chart

You might think it would be a gift from the Godz to be a supertaster but there is a distinct downside to this genetic endowment.

If you are a supertaster, you’ll hate sugar and all sweet foods and most fruits and vegetables. For a  supertaster, tasting broccoli is like tasting it multiplied by a factor of 10. So if you hated broccoli at the outset you would hate it 10 times as horribly.

To be a supertaster, regular milk tastes like heavy cream. Supertasters don’t like fat or greasy foods because they contain large molecules that press heavily on the nerves found in their taste pores. Supertasters are thus deprived of the joys of KFC, and even an occasional banana split. (This is no small tragedy.)

The American Association of Advanced Science tells us that the tongues of thin people are more likely to be packed with thousands of taste buds, the exact number of which is genetically determined like inheriting curly hair or brown eyes. Having a bunch of extra sensors on your tongue can be compared with having extra mini microphones in your ears. Sure you can hear what that person is saying about you, but you might not like what you hear.

Humans are unable to control appetite, unlike all other creatures on earth. Almost everyone can detect sweetness in 1 part in 200, salt in 1 part in 400, and bitterness in 1 part in 200,000. Odor can be detected by taste buds even when diluted to 1 in a trillion. The bad news here is that 64% of everyone’s taste buds are lost by age 30. The good news is that our ability to taste outlasts all the other senses. If it tastes good we keep eating it.

If I read on the menu that the lasagna had four cheeses, I could be totally fooled. I wouldn’t be able to tell if it had three or five. A supertaster would be able to identify each cheese and every herb or spice and every other nuance of flavor.

A sommelier can differentiate between literally hundreds of wines. A chef is as dependent on taste perception to earn a living. A great chef is as skilled as a great painter in arriving at a taste palette to please the palate.

Nestle and Cadbury employ chewing gum tasters. A good living can be had by tasting cheese, olive oil, coffee, tea, ice cream, cookies, strawberry jam, barbecue sauce, chocolate, yogurt and dozens of processed foods.

There has been a boom in employment for research chefs who develop tastes. And they now have an association to call their own. It is the Research Chefs Association or RCA. Nation’s Restaurant News trade magazine reported: “You may think it’s fairly intuitive to bring chefs on board when you’re make food but doing just that has become standard practice. More and more chefs are being hired by big business because the companies need a culinary edge as they walk that fine line between being able to mass-produce foods and keeping with what’s going on in the culinary world.”

You can make a lovely juicy salary as a supertaster–providing you first choose your parents carefully.