To Julia Moskin, Dining In section, new York Times

re: "Superfood or Monster from the Deep", September 17, 2008

I greatly appreciated your article on the strange new world of "Nutraceuticals" in last week's New York Times.  With all the claims being made by most of today's food manufacturers, it gets more and more difficult to figure out what to eat, what's healthy and what's not, and what actually makes up 'FOOD" anymore.  Nutritional trends come and go, often being overturned (remember when margarine, with it's loads of trans-fats, was the HEALTHY alternative?) be the new new thing.

The entire paradigm of "nutritionism" deserves intense scrutiny.  Claims on a package that such and such product has oodles of Vitamin C doesn't make the product healthy.  As your article points out, how the body absorbs the goodness in, say, a carrot can't be exactly replicated by inserting a bunch of beta-carotine into a muffin.  "Vitamins" can't be swapped as simply as clothing accessories or car tires.

How did so many people come to think that just FOOD wasn't good enough to eat?  Have people gotten to picky to maintain a healthy diet, or have food companies just perfected the art of up-selling food by adding dubious claims?

Human civilization didn't get to where it is by extracting oils from fish and inserting them into popcorn or "craisins".  By and large, it seems that the further we get as a society from real FOOD, the less healthy (and more over-weight) we get.

Thanks for bringing this to your reader's attention.  Hopefully people will take more time to scrutinize the claims made by the packaging in the grocery stores, and get back to eating the good stuff: FOOD.

Posted by iankusc at 02:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So much to write about in this strange day and age- the economy's tanking, China's poisoning its babies, and Moose meat is suddenly ALL the rage.  I'll get to all those things in their time, but first things first: we really need to talk about how finally, FINALLY, it's cool to be a hippy....

See, the other day, while idling away in my lovely apartment in a particularly left-wing portion of Brooklyn, I received a knock on the door from a charming, clean-cut couple who handed me a pamphlet with a polar bear on the cover and then were on their way.  I figured that they were trying to save the arctic, as many hipsters in my neighborhood attempt (from, mind you, Brooklyn), though they were infinitely better dressed than your typical Brooklyn canvaser.

So a little scrutiny of the pamphlet told me that the Polar bears are in peril, and the environment balances on the edge of a knife, and that I must do something about it.  What, pray tell, should I do about it, according to the pamphlet?  Give money to Greenpeace?  Vote for this guy or that gal?  Stop driving our cars and instead use dog sleds?  No, the pamphlets REAL idea about how to save the Polar Bears was....

Jesus?

The pamphlet came courtesy of the 7th Day Adventists, who, in a move that shows that some of their "higher-ups" have their fingers on the pulse, have decided to use Global Warming as a way to attract new members to their faith.  To be fair, were I to receive a pamphlet that talked about giving up my Saturday to bible study, I might have bristled, but I certainly couldn't resist a polar bear, now could I?

Of course, it was cool to be hippy around the year 30 AD, which may be the 7th Day Adventists' point in their new marketing material that focuses on saving the environment.  But until I received that pamphlet, I hadn't associated any religion with environmental causes.  This really isn't too far from what Peeled Snacks is doing trying to give people a new association with Healthy Snacking.

While I'm not a 7th Day Adventist, and while I have nothing for or against them, I tip my hat in their direction for employing an issue key to me and my neighbors in order to get some attention.  I checked out their website, and found THIS fascinating digestion of WWJD about Polar Bears.  Frankly, I felt, as I often do, that I am nothing but a consumer, and my number, so to speak, is in the book.

All of our numbers are listed.  We are all target markets.  Anytime you want something, ANYTHING, take a moment to wonder how you heard about it.  Now pardon me, I've got to go save some Polar Bears.

Greetings from the melting North Pole,

Peeled Skinny

Posted by iankusc at 02:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So it's been about 2 months since I've been able to publish a blog (if you failed to take notice, consider me heart-broken).  The reasons behind the lack of publishing do NOT include sloth.  I feel that it's important to explain exactly what's gone wrong here to that I can both account for my absence, and so that I can WARN THE PEOPLE!!!!

It all started after I reported back from the Fancy Food Show in July about the absolute glut of gluten-free products.  While I wasn't particularly trying to make a statement for or against gluten-free, I did squeak out that "Gluten-Free stuff just tastes BAD".  While this was in reference to most of the products out there, I was expressing it to contrast with the numerous new Gluten-Free products that were supposed to taste GOOD.

Well some guy using the pseudonym of "Joe Blow" took offense to my comment and blasted me in the comment section.  Apparently his daughter is allergic to Gluten, and he took my comments about Gluten-Free products tasting bad as a crack against his daughter.  He commented on my website a rather nasty epithet that involved me doing something to myself that I really technically can't do.

Alas, when he posted his comment, I published it, and unfortunately in doing so I left the Peeled Skinny Blog open to attacks by either this Joe Blow guy or agents from the ominous cabal of gluten-free-product-lovers.  The comment crashed the blog in such a way that I could no longer publish anything to it, nor edit it, nor change it in any way.  Job well done, Joe Blow.  Peeled Skinny: zero.  Gluten-Free Army: one.

Our blog is hosted by one of the big search-engine websites, and unfortunately it's big enough that it needs a whole lot of tech-support guys.  Now, I've actually had the pleasure of being one of those guys whose job it is to field technical support calls, figure out what the problem is, and devise a solution.  Having been in that position, I learned 4 important things about tech support:

1: Almost everyone with a tech support problem calls in angry.

2: Every tech problem has a solution.

3: Not every tech support person knows how to solve every tech support problem.

4: Because of #3, callers to tech support lines generally hang up angrier than they were when they called.

Sigh.  Had I had access to the behind-the-scenes guts of our blog, I could have solved my tech problem in minutes, but I had to go through middle-men tech support guys.  I called 5 times, each time taking an hour at least, and the first 4 times I basically wasted an hour talking to a guy that didn't know what he was doing.  Finally, with number 5, I found a guy who just, POW, solved the problem.

Here's the takeaway- if you have a tech problem, for anything from an internet connection to a printer to a database to a busted keyboard, and you call for help, IF the person you talk to can't seem to figure out what the problem is or a good course of action within 20 minutes, just HANG UP THE PHONE and CALL BACK!.  If I'd done that on day 1, I would've had 8 more important blogs published for to read than do I currently. 

Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest.  Now back to FOOD blogging....

-Peeled Skinny, technically tech supported

Posted by iankusc at 03:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)