(x-posted from All Voices)

Yesterday, while waiting in line at Starbucks in New York City and perusing the refrigerated food case (mmm…pre-portioned cheese plates), I noticed something was different. It took a second for me to put my finger on it - like realizing that a friend got a haircut or is wearing glasses. But then it was all I could see: calories! Next to each cranberry scone and piece of chocolate-drizzled coffee cake was a small plaque bearing the name of the treat and the number of calories it contained.

As of March 31, all chain restaurants in New York City (restaurants with 15 or more outlets - Mc Donalds, The Olive Garden, TGI Fridays, and the like) were required to start posting calorie counts for all menu items in the hopes of enabling consumers to make informed (and ideally healthier) decisions. CNN reported in January:

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The Boston Herald announced that Fenway Park is installing a kosher hot dog vending machine:

The home of the Fenway Frank, which claims to sell more hot dogs than any other ballpark in the country, is adding a new option for Jewish fans who adhere to strict kosher dietary laws. A new automated “Hot Nosh” vending machine, to be located in the big concourse under the bleachers, will cook and dispense all-beef, glatt kosher hot dogs in under a minute.

That’s cool at the ballpark, but how about in a Jewish day school?

Feder first eyed Kosher Vending Industries because his children’s Jewish day school, the Maimonides School in Brookline, lacked a hot lunch program. After Passover, the school will roll out another Hot Nosh machine that cooks and dispenses kosher pizza, mozzarella sticks, vegetable cutlets, onion rings and potato knishes.

Um, are there any Jewish foods - vendable! - which aren’t fried and unhealthy? And since when did mozzarella sticks and onion rings make it into the “Jewish” cultural food category?

Plus, there’s more Jewish weiners (and thus a few more Weiners) in the ballpark pews these days.

Many people complain that it’s difficult to find a synagogue to join in New York City. There are just so many options, that none of them feel exactly right - you might call it The Shul-Goers Dilemma. These days, however, I’m feeling pretty good at Temple Bet Pollan.

Michael Pollan gets his fair share of love on this blog, and his new book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto has already joined its predecessor, The Omnivore’s Dilemma as a New York Times Best Seller. Pollan is in the middle of his second whirlwind book tour in two years (I guess he sleeps on the plane) – and I hear the same account every where he goes. Huge venue, sold out show, knockout performance.

Like any effective leader - Martin Luther King included - he’s charismatic and big on the big ideas that change the way we think - or in this case how we eat. But as I devoured (pun intented) Pollan’s new book on my subway commute, I wondered what, if anything, does his worldview offer to the Jewish community? And, perhaps more interestingly, what wisdom does the tribe have to offer back to him?

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(x-posted at Pickled) 

Bonnie over at Ethicurean created a fascinating infographic for Wired that overlays the price per calorie of various foods with their energy payoff and sugar content.  It depicts what Adam Drewnowski researched and Michael Pollan wrote about for the New York Times: 1. The cheapest available food is often the most fattening.  2. The most calorie-dense foods (usually processed and frozen convenience items) tend to be concentrated in the center shelves of supermarkets.   

This supermarket setup seems pretty pervasive - it even holds true at my idealistic, non-profit Food Coop where I spent my monthly shift last night ringing up fancy cheese and (expensive) mixed-drink ephemera like limes and mint for people’s New Year’s celebrations.  Check out Bonnie’s graphic above and, when shopping in the “middle aisles” of your grocery store, don’t forget Rambam’s “middle way” - moderation.

Progressive Magazine, Mother Jones, recently published an article denouncing conservative think-tank, The Heritage Foundation’s, recent report, “Hunger Hysteria: Examining Food Security and Obesity in America.” James Ridgeway at Mother Jones writes:

According to a November 13 Heritage article…there are no longer any hungry people in the United States…. Far from having too little to eat, they argue, poor people are eating too much.

“Hunger Hysteria” is the work of Robert Rector, Heritage’s senior domestic-policy man [who] argues that while the USDA’s numbers [of food insecurity in the US] might sound “ominous” on the surface, “the government’s own data show that the overwhelming majority of food insecure adults are, like most adult Americans, overweight or obese.”

I think I might lose my lunch.
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What do you get when you cross: 

-A blend of 28 cocoas (including 14 of the most expensive and exotic around the globe)
- 5 grams of edible 23-karat gold, served in a goblet lined with edible gold
- 18-karat gold bracelet at the bottom of the goblet (with 1 karat of diamonds)
- Whipped cream covered in more gold and a side of La Madeline au Truffle, which sells for $2,600/pound?

The Frozzen (yes two zs) Haute Chocolate, a $25,000 desert from Serendipity 3 in New York City.  Here’s my question, why would you want to EAT gold?  Yes, yes, there’s the whole “you are what you eat,” thing, but would you really want to be an inert mineral that probably causes serious indigestion?

Let’s just say The Frozzen Haute Chocolate doesn’t top my Chanukah gift wish list this year - but if you want to get me something from The Sustainable Chanukah Gift Guide…

It’s a familiar legend - whether it’s the Golem or Dr. Frankenstein’s monster (the latter perhaps inspired by tales of the former) - what we arrogantly create comes back to haunt us. America’s monster might turn out to be one that we encounter in its most powerful form each Halloween: corn. Not the sweet, buttery kind that we get from our CSA in July. The kind that industrial-strength petro-chemicals and lobbyist-induced grain subsidies have produced in quantities unfathomable even fifty years ago. As Michael Pollan noted in Omnivore’s dilemma, which so eloquently sounded the clarion call for the dangers of corn, much of this crop has been turned into food additives that are so commonplace that if we’re eating any type of processed food, chances are we’re eating corn, even if we don’t even know it! Read more »

Enlitened Kosher Cooking
Nechama Cohen
Feldheim Publishers (October, 2006)

Nechama Cohen’s Enlitened Kosher Cooking attempts to strike the elusive balance between healthy eating and traditional Jewish cuisine. 

As a nutritionist and mother of five who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, Cohen originally intended her cookbook to be focused towards other Jews struggling with the disease.  Ultimately, however, Enlitend Kosher Cooking makes the broader connection between diabetes and obesity.  While enjoying meals is an important part of Shabbat and the holidays, Cohen suggests that these simchas can lead to overindulgence that contributes to weight gain and an unhealthy lifestyle.

Cohen’s book toggles between Torah (You shall be very careful of yourselves” Devarim 4:15) and the detailed nutritional charts around which her recipes are based.  She draws from the traditional canon of Jewish cooking, but her recipes are not limited to Ashkenazi fare.  In addition to Fat-Free Knaidlach and Classic Golden Chicken Soup, the book includes recipes that lighten up the familiar (Vegetarian Stuffed Peppers, Tofu Chopped Liver, Zucchini Kugel, Halva Frosting) and ones that draw from other Jewish cultures around the world (Sephardic Spicy Fish in Red Sauce, Spicy Yeminite Soup, Orange and Fennel Salad).

Cohen relies on heavily on the “ingredient swap” method of healthy cooking.  Instead of creating innovative new dishes, some of her recipes simply replace eggs with Egg Beaters, or use low fat milk or cream cheese instead of the full-fat versions.  While this approach seems slightly unsophisticated, her book is ultimately still useful for cooks who prefer traditional-feeling dishes (or are cooking for friends and relatives who do) without the extra fat and calories. 

Find out more or purchase Enlightened Kosher Cooking HERE.

Quick Bite is a new segment on The Jew & The Carrot which offers pithy reviews of today’s Jewish cookbooks. If you have a cookbook you would like to see reviewed, email tips@jcarrot.org

Any doubts that humane, healthy, organic and local are the dominant food trends? Witness today’s NYTimes dining:

• Prince Charles: Farmer, Cookie Maker, Ecologist and Yes, the Future King
• Foie Gras Makers struggle to Please Critics and Chefs
• When the Wine is Green: an exploration of biodynamic, natural and organic viticulture
• Locavores: Preserving Fossil Fuels and Nearby Farmland by Eating Locally
  
• Wonder Bread backlash: Alex Witchel’s voice of benign and boring dissent
• A New Alliance in the Fight Against Childhood Obesity: Rachel Ray and Bill Clinton (!)

Assuming the dining section is one step behind the curve, reporting peaking trends rather than coming ones, what do you think will be next? Where will sustainability take our plates tomorrow?

[NYTimes]

Demanding a law that favors eaters over agribusiness, Michael Pollan sounds the tom toms on the next five years of food policy in the US and around the world. Call your senators before your children catch obesity.

In great and growing numbers, people are voting with their forks for a different sort of food system. But as powerful as the food consumer is — it was that consumer, after all, who built a $15 billion organic-food industry and more than doubled the number of farmer’s markets in the last few years — voting with our forks can advance reform only so far. It can’t, for example, change the fact that the system is rigged to make the most unhealthful calories in the marketplace the only ones the poor can afford. To change that, people will have to vote with their votes as well — which is to say, they will have to wade into the muddy political waters of agricultural policy.

[NYTimes]

Scary.

Send this comic to a friend.

A friend of my sent me an article written in the Washington Post about Google with the subject, “we should all be as lucky.” It talks about the amazingly top quality café (notice how they chose not to use the word cafeteria instead) which Google offers its employees. Did I mention that it’s free? For all three meals every day? And how by noon menus are distributed electronically for all the 11 cafes on its campus? Furthermore, I am happy to say that “Google supports local farming, organic produce, hormone-free meats and healthful eating.” Don’t you wish you could work there?

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These words, from Pirkei Avot - Wisdom of the Fathers - and remind me of an article about school lunches published last week by Grist. ”Renegade Lunch Lady,” Ann Cooper, is working to change the face of school lunch in American public schools, starting with the 9,000 students eating at the 16 schools in the Berkeley Unified School System. 
 

They also reminded me of a related and less-heartening article I read a few years back in Mother Jones, called Unhappy Meals, which painted a very bleak picture of the average school lunch.

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• “Thankfully, the new year brings news of two very positive developments in the world of kashrut that are of a piece with Pollan’s conclusions.” The “Justice” hecsher and Tuv Ha’aretz. [Jewish Journal]

• Organic agriculture can help beat greenhouse gasses and global warming. [International Federation of Environmental Journalists]

• He left Brooklyn for the farm, but says small-scale farming doesn’t pay and never will. [Grist]

• Temple Grandin, leading slaughterhouse designer and NYTimes bestseller, on bettering the kosher kill. [Anthropology of Food Journal - Improving Religious Slaughter Practices in the US]

• In addition to the $85 billion a year Americans spend on obesity, with the government and insurance companies picking up about 85 pct of the tab, obesity costs the obese better jobs and financial security. Weight bias is stronger than race bias, which you can test for yourself at Harvard. [NYTimes]