Food Blogging

I never thought I'd become a food blogger, but so many stories have food in them today.

(1) Save Chocolate! Due to popular demand (meaning the FDA got slammed) the consumer comment period on Big Food's petition to be allowed to substitute vegetable fat for cocoa butter has been extended to June 25, 2007. Don'tMessWithOurChocolate.com has a sample letter you can use in composing your petition to the FDA. I don't want to buy a bar of Crisco, do you?

(2) Pizza. Resigned-in-disgrace AIDS Czar Randall Tobias, patron of the DC escort service, said this in his defense:

[ABC Investigative Reporter Brian] ROSS: Well, David, I talked to him one day before he resigned and told him that we had found his name and personal phone number on a list of clients of the so-called DC Madam’s escort service in Washington. And what he told me was that he in fact had been a customer of the service, but that he had not had sex. He had had what he called gals come over to his condo to give him a massage. He claimed there was no sex but that he was stunned by the fact that we were aware he was a client and that was his conversation. I asked him if he knew any of the young women, their names. He said he didn’t remember them at all. He said it was like ordering pizza.

I don't even know what to say about a comment like that.

(3) Melamine. Apparently our food supply is awash in the stuff, much of it coming from China. It's ground up and added to feed and grains. When a food is tested for nutritional value, melamine looks like protein, so it 'boosts' that number. It's all part of the scientific breakdown of food into scientific categories or nutrients, which has had a disastrous effect on the American and the world diet. Read this article from the Times magazine a few months ago: the best diet is to eat food your grandmother would recognize as food. Mostly plants, and nothing reconstituted in a factory. Most of it tastes like crap, anyway.

NYTimes: Filler in Animal Feed Is Open Secret in China

Like Water For.....Crisco?

Big Food has petitioned the FDA to allow them to sell vegetable fats and oils and pass it off as real chocolate, which is made with cocoa butter. Mmmm, a big bar of Crisco. You can submit an e-comment to the FDA in opposition to this travesty (click on submit your comments and look for this docket number: 2007P-0085). Save chocolate!

Here's the comment I submitted to the FDA:

Keep chocolate as it is, made of cocoa and cocoa butter. I do not want another false adulterated product passed off as the real thing. Plus, I do not think any research has been done on the nutritional implications of replacing a natural, satisfying ingredient -- cocoa butter -- with vegetable fats and oils. We've already seen the disastrous results of substituting high-fructose corn syrup for sugar. Don't add to the obesity epidemic, and don't take away my real chocolate. Do not adopt these regulations. Keep chocolate real.

LATimes: Hands off my chocolate, FDA!
The FDA may allow Big Chocolate to pass off a waxy substitute as the real thing.

sisyphus shrugged: save chocolate!

Suburban Guerrilla: Oh no!

Don'tMessWithOurChocolate.com

FDA docket No. 2007P-0085: Adopt Regulations of General Applicability to all Food Standards that would Permit, within Stated Boundaries, Deviations from the Requirements of the Individual Food Standards of Identity

Like Water for Chocolate (novel)

wikipedia: Chocolate

Physiological effects

Pleasure of consuming

Part of the pleasure of eating chocolate is due to the fact that its melting point is slightly below human body temperature: it melts in the mouth. Chocolate intake has been linked with release of serotonin in the brain, which produces feelings of pleasure.[13] A study reported on the BBC indicated that melting chocolate in one's mouth produced an increase in brain activity and heart rate that was more intense than that associated with passionate kissing, and also lasted four times as long after the activity had ended.[14] Research has shown that heroin addicts tend to have an increased liking for chocolate; this may be because it triggers dopamine release in the brain's reinforcement systems[15] — an effect, albeit a legal one, similar to that of opiates.

Potential health benefits and risks

Recent studies have suggested that cocoa or dark chocolate may possess certain beneficial effects on human health. Dark chocolate, with its high cocoa content, is a rich source of the flavonoids epicatechin and gallic acid, which are thought to possess cardioprotective properties. Cocoa possesses a significant antioxidant action, protecting against LDL oxidation, perhaps more than other polyphenol antioxidant-rich foods and beverages. Processing cocoa with alkali destroys most of the flavonoids.[16] Some studies have also observed a modest reduction in blood pressure and flow-mediated dilation after consuming approximately 100g of dark chocolate daily. There has even been a fad diet, named "Chocolate diet", that emphasizes eating chocolate and cocoa powder in capsules. However, consuming milk chocolate or white chocolate, or drinking milk with dark chocolate, appears largely to negate the health benefit.[17] Chocolate is also a calorie-rich food with a high fat content, so daily intake of chocolate also requires reducing caloric intake of other foods.

Two-thirds of the fat in chocolate comes in the forms of a saturated fat called stearic acid and a monounsaturated fat called oleic acid. However, unlike other saturated fats, stearic acid does not raise levels of LDL cholesterol in the bloodstream.[18] Consuming relatively large amounts of dark chocolate and cocoa does not seem to raise serum LDL cholesterol levels; some studies even find that it could lower them[19].

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Studies suggest a specially formulated type of cocoa may boost brain function and delay decline as people age.[21]