Interesterified Fat ... Good Grief!

I was doing more reading about HFCS and trans fats.  Usually this is a great diet aid for me ... as I find myself less hungry after reading about this culinary garbage.

I found something interesting and new.  Because trans fats are going away, our friends in the industrial labs ... err, kitchens ... have found a new way to modify the fats in our foods.  It's called interesterified fat.

This is the latest way to modify fats to give longer shelf life and better mouth feel.  In other words, make low fat foods taste more like high fat foods and be able to sit on the store shelves for much, much longer periods without spoiling.

While that is fine and dandy for the manufacturer, what about us?  What are the studies saying that this wonder of modern science do for us?

The short version is: it's trans fats all over, plus a bit of a bonus.  Higher glucose levels, cholesterol badness, etc.  Isn't that great?  A fat that increases blood sugar levels!  What will those chemists in the industrial kitchens come up with next? 

Look, if you need your food to taste and feel like it has lard in it ... put lard in it!  Your body knows how to process lard.  Yes, you'll have to walk an extra mile to work it off ... but, your body won't do other strange things with it. 

Don't want to gain the extra weight because you fry your fries in oh-so-delicious lard?  Then, maybe eat something less fattening.  Or, eat fewer fries.  Or, try baked fries (they're pretty great, really). 

You have choices.  A lot of them.  Choose to stay away from the industrial junk ...

Jason's Deli Bans HFCS

Amazing ... Jason's Deli has removed high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) from its menu items.  Frankly, I say good for them!  I read their site regarding this move and find that I really agree with their owner.

I'm not sure I agree with their stance on MSG.  The problem with MSG is that there is a fair percentage of people who are mildly, or worse, allergic to it.  I'm not one of them, so I like MSG.

But, back to my spiel ... does bread really need such sweetening?  No.  Not at all.

And yet, industrial bakeries pour the gunk into our bread all the time.  Not only just bread, just about everything else.  It's like the corporate "chefs" think that we all want everything to be sweet.

People are really missing out when they eat this sweetened garbage.  A nice savory dish is so great.  By pouring sweetened syrup all over (and in) everything, we miss out on good food.

When you go to the store, read the ingredient list on what you buy.  You'd be so shocked how many forms of sugar go into everything. 

Stop buying this junk.  Take the time to make things yourself. 

Yes, take the time!  I know how hard it is to find space in one's packed schedule to cook.  Food is food?  Right.

Wrong!

Make the time ... you and your family are worth it.

Another Zombie Sighting!

I just saw another blog entry about someone who has a 12 year old McDonald's hamburger. I'm just at a loss for words. Especially when I think about how many of those I have eaten in my lifetime.

If I did love meat so much, news like this might drive me vegan ...

HFCS Bites Back

Well, apparently the Corn Refiners Association is feeling the heat about how some of us really don't care for their ultra-refined corn product ... high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). They went and created a web page, sweetsurprise.com, to defend their main product.

The page is oh-so-informative. FAQs, white papers, event a virtual press room with all kinds of wonderful information about how HFCS is "natural" because the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says it is.

Keep in mind that these are the same people (with the help of the US Supreme Court) who call a tomato a vegetable and wanted to classify ketchup as a vegetable as well for the sake of school lunch programs for kids. Moral here? Not everything the FDA says is packed with high-quality wisdom or common sense.

Now, before anyone goes off and thinks I hate the FDA, I don't. I appreciate all the effort they do to keep the food supply safe. I just think in some cases, they need to be more careful with how they use certain words.

"Natural" ... this implies a lot. When I hear this word, I picture something out of a Disney movie. A young, hard-working farm hand picking a ripe potato out of the ground ... gently and respectfully putting it into his basket. The potato ends up being carefully placed into a large hopper, cleaned with care, and taken to the store where I purchase it ... and proceed to mash it until it cries out for help!

OK, the realities of feeding hundreds of millions of people mean that food is harvested a bit more mechanized help. That's cool. Expecting some pastoral fantasy land is a bit extreme. However, not wanting to have food that has gone through more processing than the gas in our cars ... that is reasonable.

Wikipedia has a quick three paragraphs on the process. Read it carefully. If you understand all the words and all the processes, well, welcome to my site Mr. Industrial Food Chemist. Because, that's some strange sounding stuff that they're doing just to produce this "natural food". Ion exchange and liquid chromatography? These are not processes that I would apply the word "natural" to.

The Corn Refiners' Association site, sweetsurprise.com, has a lot of information about how HFCS has the same amount of calories as sugar, how it is used in wonderful happy ways to make your foods better, and other topics obviously pumped out by a bunch of PR guys. Nothing bad about PR guys, in fact, the corn folks have hired good ones. They must be expensive, too, they're address is 1701 Pennsylvania Avenue ... yeah, just one block from the White House.

What the site doesn't talk about is the basic truth that HFCS is highly processed. This is what I, and many, many others, object to the most. It's industrial food. Plain and simple. Food taken and processed until it is unrecognizable.

Another minor point: remember how margarines and other such butter-like spreads were supposed to be heart-friendly? How did they do it? Through the magic of hydroginated fats. Yes, so healthy for you! Fewer calories, less fat!

Ooops ... maybe not. Turns out they were worse for you. Far worse. Yes, the trans fats made life convenient for the industrial producers through longer shelf lives. But, the trans fats themselves increase the risk of heart attack and other bad things ... this we know. And, the medical types have said that they are still studying how trans fats hurt us.

So, do we believe now that HFCS is perfectly safe? Possibly. It may very well be. The corn folks do a fine job of explaining their position, how HFCS allegedly benefits us (for some reason, I picture the movie showing kids being sprayed with DDT ... proving how safe it is), how our lives and taste buds are enriched by having HFCS slathered all over everything.

The simple fact that cannot be denied is that HFCS is very highly processed, it is industrial food. That is what is wrong with it. That is what so many people are trying to escape.

That is what no PR agency will be able to spin into nothing.

Natural Peanut Butter

I grew up with peanut butter. My mom made the best PB&J sandwiches. Often, we'd have blackberry jam or raspberry jam made from berries that we (read: my parents) picked. My favorite was when mom made it on Oroweat Oatnut bread. They were, at the time, a large local Seattle bakery that sold to the grocery stores ... now, I think they sell all over.

Mom liked to buy Adam's peanut butter. I was a natural peanut butter. Ingredients: peanuts, salt. We had to stir it before use because the oil would separate. So very yummy.

Over the years, I'd buy peanut butter at the health food stores when I could. Pick up a pound or two of roasted peanuts and use their grinder. Fresh, good, nothing bad for you in it (besides the fatty goodness found in peanuts).

After a while of being in the Philippines, I started to crave a little peanut butter. I tried a couple of local brands. They were bad. Well, not bad. Really quite awful.

I recently looked at the ingredients lists on them. One has a nice, simple ingredients list. Listed in plain English ... how very kind. Proudly, the number two and three ingredients are Dextrose and Sucrose ... ah, sugars. No wonder the thing tastes sickly sweet. Oh, and right after that? Hydrogenated vegetable oil. That's a nice code-phrase for "trans fats inside". No thanks!

The other brand ... not quite so user friendly. Many of their ingredients are, again, in plain English. But a few ... words so long and complex that I couldn't pronounce them if I tried. Even with nearly two years of college chemistry and a full year of just studying Greek and Latin roots to words. Yes, long and nasty chemical names.

As I advance in my years, I've gotten lazy. I used to look those up out of curiosity. I'm no longer so curious. I just translate long chemical allegedly-eatable food names to "industrial goo" or "slow poison".

Oh, did I mention that neither local brand really tastes like peanuts? Or, that they seem to have so much sugar that they should be relabeled as "peanut-flavored sugar paste"? Not only that, they're relatively expensive.

At the local mercado (open-air market), there's a gentleman who spends his day grinding peanut butter. He's got a little stall and he grinds your roasted nuts for you as you wait. The price is very reasonable (P10 per kilo) and it's fun to watch.

Roasting some peanuts and getting fresh peanut butter? Oh yes ... I must.

Ingredients

• 1-1/2 kilograms peanuts

Procedure

Spread the peanuts out on a roasting pan. Bake them at 350F (175C) for about 10-15 minutes.


Let cool.

Take to the mercado (market) and pay the friendly peanut grinder to grind them for you.

Done.

Enjoy.

Test Results

Primary Test Group: Very peanutty! Yum! Marasa! Delicious!

Potential Improvements

The results were very, very good. Room for improvement? Little.

I might try adding a little bit of salt next time. Not a lot, as I don't want to ruin the great peanut flavor.

Conclusions

So easy. No excuse for me not to do this. Given that the cost to grind is P10 (about US$0.22) per kilo, there's no excuse not to get peanut butter this way. That makes the peanut butter P95 (US$2.16) per kilo.

Very reasonable by any measure ... and really very good.

Again, it's worth taking the little bit of extra time to make it myself. So glad I did.

Industrial Burger

A friend of mine passed along a link to the Bionic Burger web site. I couldn't believe what I saw! Burgers lasting for years without growing mold and other nastiness?

Take a look at their video. Holy cow!



Do I believe it? Not sure. Am I tempted to start collecting a few McDonald's burgers from the local store? Possibly.

If true, this is hard-core industrial food. Good tasting hard-core industrial food. But, hard-core industrial food, none-the-less. Not sure I'm so keen on McDonald's after seeing this video.

While I'm pretty sure that McDonald's isn't using Kobe or Wagyu beef. I'm also pretty sure that they're not using the worst of what's available.

Notice there's a link to a web site in the video. It leads to a pay site for wellness. That makes me a bit skeptical about this whole thing.

That fact doesn't invalidate my desire to get away from industrial food as much as I can. It just makes this video and their claims less credible.

Cane Sugary Goodness

I was at my friend Curtis' canteen today. He and his wife, Flor, run an eatery for the local college kids. Good food on the cheap.

I saw in their cooler these two bottles of soda. Royal is, as its color heavily implies, an orange soda. A very orange-y, very sweet orange soda. I love it.

Sparkle, the local discount soda, is a lemon soda. Not so sweet, but very satisfying and not very hard on the wallet. The pictured 240 ml bottle, about 8 oz., is just P8 most places. That's just US$0.18. Inexpensive, but yummy!

Both are made with cane sugar. Both taste better than any other sodas I've had in the States. Even the Sparkle is better.

So, just say no to HFCS. Say yes to cane sugar. Or, at the very least, say yes to sugar from sugar beets.

And, if you can get either where you live ... try these sodas. You'll be glad you did.

HFCS ... Scourge!

Yes, this is coming right on the heels of my last post. After reading the ingredient list on the bottle of "liquid smoke" and seeing high fructose corn syrup, I just had to write something.

Warning: rant mode on.

HFCS, or high fructose corn syrup, is used as a sweetener in all kinds of industrial food. It's cheaper than sugar (from either sugar beets or sugar cane), it lasts longer, and it's easier to handle.

In my not-so-humble opinion ... so what?!? It doesn't taste as good, there's some controversies about the its health effects vs. normal sugars, and ... well, it's industrial food!

Here's a nice example: I'm a big can of Coca Cola. Love the stuff. Actually, I love it too much and I'm trying to quit (emphasis on the "trying"). Back in the States, Coke is made with HFCS.

When I moved to the Philippines, I noticed that the Coke tasted better. How could that be? They're the same, right? Wrong! Philippine Coke is made with cane sugar. Yes, good, old fashioned cane sugar.

Oh, it is so much better. And, it's P21 per liter (as of this writing, that's about US$0.48). So, it's cheaper, too. Ha!

OK, OK, I know it'd be more expensive to use cane sugar in the US because it's not quite as tropical as the Philippines. Still, the difference is in the taste. That's the point.

Sugar tastes better than HFCS. Sugar is also not seriously highly processed goo.

There's a reason that Kosher Coke (Coca Cola made for Passover) is so popular. It's made with cane sugar. There's a reason that Dr. Pepper connoisseurs love the "Dublin Dr. Pepper" (Dr. Pepper made in a plant in Dublin, TX) ... cane sugar, not HFCS.

I'm going to try my best to avoid this junk. And, I hope that more corporations stop using it. Stop being cheap and taking shortcuts.

OK, I feel better now.

Industrial Food

In my previous post, I used the phrase "industrial food". I've used this phrase for years to describe highly-processed foods or foods with ingredients one can only find in a factor. Yes, I take credit for it ... ha!

For me, on one end of the food scale is industrial food. At the other end is pure, raw, organic food.

I'm not a big fan of industrial food. Industrial food leads to lesser quality final product. Yes, it's easy in a factory. But, do we really want to live our lives consuming that which is easy to make in vast quantities? Or, do we want to spend a little more time and a little more money on food that tastes and satisfies far, far more? I pick the latter.

Food, however, is not entirely science. This isn't black-and-white. Is industrial food always bad? No, but it usually is. Is organic food always good? No, raw free range chicken is probably not the best for you.

Somewhere between the two is probably the best compromise. Although, I've found the more I stay away from industrial foods, the better I feel.

That said, I'm no zealot. Sometimes I want a McDonald's Quarter Pounder and fries and nothing else will do.